Coordination based on obligation

The authors explore the view that coordinated behavior is driven by the social constraints (e.g. obligations and interdictions) that agents in organizations are subject to. In this framework, agents adopt those goals that are requested by their obligations, knowing that not fulfilling obligations induces a price to pay or a loss of utility. Based on this idea they build an integrated agent coordination system where they represent the organization, the roles played by agents, the obligations imposed among roles, the goals and the plans that agents may adopt. To consistently update an agent´s obligations and interdictions they present an incremental propagation method that also helps with detecting and deciding between conflicting obligations. One strength of this method is that it supports a generic coordination method based on ex-changing and locally propagating obligations and interdictions. Once a goal adopted, a special brand of plans, conversation plans, are available to the agents for effectively carrying out coordinated action. They illustrate the framework with examples from service provisioning in telecommunication networks and supply chain integration