A semiotic approach to organisational role modelling for intelligent agents

Joaquim Filipe

Kecheng Liu

Bernadette Sharp

pp. 187-211

in: Kecheng Liu, Rodney J. Clarke, Peter Andersen (eds), Information, organisation and technology, Berlin, Springer, 2001

Abstract

An organisational role is defined as a set of functions together with a set of obligations and authorisations. The same human or artificial agent can play several roles. It is also possible that several agents are designated to play a given role. In fact, in modern organisations it is common to find most agents performing several different simultaneous roles. This may cause ethical and deontic conflicts when the same agent must play conflicting roles. In such cases the agent must use some criterion to solve the internal conflict. In the following we will propose a methodology for approaching this kind of problems, maintaining the essential agents' autonomy.