Establishing norms with metanorms over interaction topologies

Norms are a valuable means of establishing coherent cooperative behaviour in decentralised systems in which there is no central authority. Axelrod’s seminal model of norm establishment in populations of self-interested individuals provides some insight into the mechanisms needed to support this through the use of metanorms, but considers only limited scenarios and domains. While further developments of Axelrod’s model have addressed some of the limitations, there is still only limited consideration of such metanorm models with more realistic topological configurations. In response, this paper tries to address such limitation by considering its application to different topological structures. Our results suggest that norm establishment is achievable in lattices and small worlds, while such establishment is not achievable in scale-free networks, due to the problematic effects of hubs. The paper offers a solution, first by adjusting the model to more appropriately reflect the characteristics of the problem, and second by offering a new dynamic policy adaptation approach to learning the right behaviour. Experimental results demonstrate that this dynamic policy adaptation overcomes the difficulties posed by the asymmetric distribution of links in scale-free networks, leading to an absence of norm violation, and instead to norm emergence.     

Commitments among agents

Commitments are a powerful representation for modeling multiagent interactions. Previous approaches have considered the semantics of commitments and how to check compliance with them. However, these approaches do not capture some of the subtleties that arise in real-life applications such as e-commerce, in which contracts and institutions have implicit temporal references. In this column, we describe a rich representation for the temporal content of commitments that lets us capture realistic contracts and avoid ambiguities. Consequently, this approach lets us reason about whether, and at what point, a commitment is satisfied or breached, and whether it is or ever becomes unenforceable.     

Conventions and Commitments in Distributed CSCW Groups

Conventions are necessary to establish in any recurrentcooperative arrangement. In electronic work, they are importantso as to regulate the use of shared objects. Based on empiricalresults from a long-term study of a group cooperating inelectronic work, I present examples showing that the group failedto develop normative convention behavior. These difficulties informing conventions can be attributed to a long list of factors:the lack of clear precedents, different perspectives among groupmembers, a flexible cooperation media, limited communication, thedesign process, and discontinuous cooperation. Further, I arguethat commitments to the conventions were difficult, due to theconventions not reaching an acceptance threshold, uneven payoffs,and weak social influences. The empirical results call for aspecific set of awareness information requirements to promoteactive learning about the group activity in order to support thearticulation of conventions. The requirements focus on the roleof feedback as a powerful mechanism for shaping and learningabout group behavior.     

Networking actors and organisations

Computer-supported networks are discussed as distinct social forms which may provide shelter to other forms such as a small cooperative ensemble, a particular community of practice, yet offer some special perspectives. Foremost among these perspectives are power issues, but also the role of networks in generating knowledge, in encouraging and bounding plurality (by management control as well as by standardisation). One particular aspect of networking explored in this paper is the locatedness of activities in a specific time-spacecontextuality.     

Coordinating Agents in Organizations Using Social Commitments

One of the main challenges faced by the multi-agent community is to ensure the coordination of autonomous agents in open heterogeneous multi-agent systems. In order to coordinate their behaviour, the agents should be able to interact with each other. Social commitments have been used in recent years as an answer to the challenges of enabling heterogeneous agents to communicate and interact successfully. However, coordinating agents only by means of interaction models is difficult in open multi-agent systems, where possibly malevolent agents can enter at any time and violate the interaction rules. Agent organizations, institutions and normative systems have been used to control the way agents interact and behave. In this paper we try to bring together the two models of coordinating agents: commitment-based interaction and organizations. To this aim we describe how one can use social commitments to represent the expected behaviour of an agent playing a role in an organization. We thus make a first step towards a unified model of coordination in multi-agent systems: a definition of the expected behaviour of an agent using social commitments in both organizational and non-organizational contexts.     

Specifying and Monitoring Interactions and Commitments in Open Business Processes

Business processes are increasingly complex and open because they rely on services that are distributed geographically and across organizations. So, they're prone to several points of failure. Monitoring, therefore, remains an important concern. A new approach specifies and monitors interactions among heterogeneous services by tracking their commitments. This approach extends recent research that views business process design as a composition of interaction protocols. It specifies and monitors policies and commitments as a way to monitor service-level agreements and recover from process failures.     

A comparison between Hankel norms and induced system norms

A general definition is formulated for the Hankel norms as the induced norms of a strictly proper stable linear time-invariant (LTI) system mapping vector-valued L^p-past inputs to vector-valued L^q-future outputs. Some Hankel norms are derived by the maximum principle and duality. A property termed the system integral invariance is introduced by the derivation of those Hankel norms. Furthermore, the norm-induced initial conditions and the comparison between the Hankel norms and the induced system norms are also presented     

Minimization of norms and logarithmic norms by diagonal similarities

It is a commonly occurring problem to find good norms · or logarithmic norms (·) for a given matrix in the sense that they should be close to respectively the spectral radius (A) and the spectral abscissa (A). Examples may be the certification thatA is convergent, i.e. (A)A<1 or stable, i.e. (A)(A)<0. Often the ordinary norms do not suffice and one would like to try simple modifications of them such as using an ordinary norm for a diagonally transformed matrix. This paper treats this problem for some of the ordinary norms.

---

Minimisierung von Normen und Logarithmischen Normen durch Diagonale Transformationen

Zusammenfassung Ein oft vorkommendes praktisches Problem ist die Konstruktion von guten Normen · und logarithmischen Normen (·) für eine gegebene MatrixA. Mit gut wird dann verstanden, daß A den Spektralradius (A)=max |₁| und (A) die Spektralabszisse (A)=max Re _i gut approximieren. Beispiele findet man für konvergente Matrizen wo (A)A<1 gewünscht ist, und für stabile Matrizen wo (A)(A)<0 zu zeigen ist. Wir untersuchen hier, wie weit man mit Diagonaltransformationen und dengewöhnlichsten Normen kommen kann.

     

Performance of Lean in large organisations

The paper focuses upon an in depth investigation to decipher whether larger organisations embracing Lean as a philosophy were indeed more successful. Achievement was measured by the impact an organisation's Lean journey had on its financial and operational efficiency levels.     

Modelling user participation in organisations as networks

User participation (UP) means activities that individuals perform for processes to develop systems or to act collectively and is an important factor for gaining user commitment and minimising user resistance. This is due to the ability of UP to shape the structure and behaviour of organisations through leveraged user expertise, minimised redundant processes and improved understanding of systems.Grounded on social network analysis and UP research, this article proposes a mathematical model for analysing UP in ‘organisations as networks’. The model identifies concepts for characterising network structures for UP and introduces indicators for assessing the network behaviour of human participants within organisations. The article concludes by discussing implications for researchers and practitioners, and limitations of the proposed model.     

Employees’ witnessed presence in changing organisations

In recent years, governments, businesses and other organisations have increasingly been forced to attempt to survive by reorganising themselves fundamentally. Although this happens at present on a large scale, it is not unprecedented. In fact, most organisations have had to change their working practises at some time for some reason—for example, when the competition catches up or when technology threatens to make production obsolete. The usual strategy is to fire part of the staff and to redistribute tasks. This tends to put a heavy burden on staff. They have to search for other jobs or attempt re-skilling. Those remaining may face substantial changes in their relations to their managers, who will require changes … ‘or else’. The study reported in the paper focuses on people’s reactions to this approach. Some employees accept and leave. Others become aware of an opportunity to damage their company. Others again see a way to resist and change the way the managers behave and thereby turn around the company and maintain or increase the number of jobs. The study focuses on two questions. The first is how one should model or describe the behaviour of people in the third category, i.e. those wishing to contribute. It does not seem useful to follow one’s first hunch, i.e. to search for quantifiable patterns. People’s behaviour will always be contextualised as a reaction to what managers do. This suggests the use of qualitative methods. The second question is whether the concept of presence may clarify the behaviour and identify ways for employees to contribute positively to changes in their organisations. An obstacle to answering the second question is that qualitative methods focus on people’s experiences in some context, and on the emergence of their behaviour, but do not necessarily lead to suggestions on how to behave with what effect. It is attempted to answer the second question and thereby the first question with the aim of identifying what people may do who are not immediately fired or made redundant when fundamental organisational changes are introduced. Data have been collected from four companies that decided to initiate such changes in 2003–2004.     

Unprovable Security of Perfect NIZK and Non-interactive Non-malleable Commitments

We present barriers to provable security of two important cryptographic primitives, perfect non-interactive zero knowledge (NIZK) and non-interactive non-alleable commitments:

1. ○
   Black-box reductions cannot be used to demonstrate adaptive soundness (i.e., that soundness holds even if the statement to be proven is chosen as a function of the common reference string) of any statistical NIZK for NP based on any “standard” intractability assumptions.
    
2. ○
   Black-box reductions cannot be used to demonstrate non-malleability of non-interactive, or even 2-message, commitment schemes based on any “standard” intractability assumptions.
    

We emphasize that the above separations apply even if the construction of the considered primitives makes a non-black-box use of the underlying assumption.

As an independent contribution, we suggest a taxonomy of game-based intractability assumptions.     

RE challenges in multi-site software development organisations

The increasing globalisation of the software industry demands an investigation of requirements engineering (RE) in multi-site software development organisations. Requirements engineering is a task difficult enough when done locally—but it is even more difficult when cross-functional stakeholder groups specify requirements across cultural, language and time zone boundaries. This paper reports on a field study that investigated RE challenges introduced by the stakeholders' geographical distribution in a multi-site organisation. The goal was to examine RE practices in global software development, and to formulate recommendations for improvement as well as to provide directions for future research on methods and tools. Based on the empirical evidence, we have constructed a model of how remote communication and knowledge management, cultural diversity and time differences negatively impact requirements gathering, negotiations and specifications. Findings reveal that aspects such as a lack of a common understanding of requirements, together with a reduced awareness of a working local context, a trust level and an ability to share work artefacts significantly challenge the effective collaboration of remote stakeholders in negotiating a set of requirements that satisfies geographically distributed customers. The paper concludes with recommendations for improving RE practices in this setting.

Framing norms in online communities

One problem many organizations deal with is how to effectively govern their online communities. Unlike employees, online community members often respond poorly to formal control mechanisms. This study develops theory on how moderators can build norms in online communities using frame analysis theory from the social movements literature. Through a case analysis of two communities focused on discussing recreational drugs, our findings demonstrate that norm formation is influenced by two phenomena: (1) norm acceptance, and (2) norm transience. Norm acceptance requires that moderators be consistent in their expression of norms. To a lesser extent, moderators must be credible in their expression of norms. If these things occur, the community will accept the norms. Norm transience, on the other hand, occurs when moderators are not sensitive to the community identity. If accepted norms are not aligned with community identity, they will be dropped by the community within one or two years.     

Technologies of care in community-based organisations: agency and authenticity

Based upon research into small community-based organisations, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) can be interpreted as a technology that emerges from complex environments of support, teaching, and community development. While the ICTs investigated are commonplace and relatively simple systems (personal computers, Internet), they are part of complex and extended systems of action, knowledge, information, and support that reach into local communities. This basket of processes and skills, oriented around social justice principles, can be conceived of as ‘technologies of care’, strongly influenced by the values and work activity primarily concerned with supporting people in need. Furthermore, prior research has tended to take a dystopic view about the use of technology by women, who are the major workforce in such environments, but a more nuanced approach is taken her, demonstrating that while workers are competent with ICTs, they is only one element in a process which relies upon communicative and interpretive independence. This understanding of the place of ICTs in human services work has important implications for those implementing or designing ICTs, though clarifying workers’ tacit understandings is a research challenge. Based on more recent research, suggestions are also made about the limitations of the study and the need to take into account other ways of articulating tacit, practical knowledge about ICT relationships through methods such as CO-MAP.     

Supermigrative semi-copulas and triangular norms

A semi-copula S:[0,1]²→[0,1] is called supermigrative if it is commutative and satisfies S(αx,y)?S(x,αy) for all α∈[0,1] and for all x,y∈[0,1] such that y?x. In this paper, the class of supermigrative semi-copulas is investigated, by focusing, in particular, on the subclass of continuous triangular norms. Some interesting connections with the theory of copulas are also underlined.