Abstract. In this paper we propose a new role for the agent metaphor in the definition of the organizational structure of multiagent systems. The agent metaphor is extended to consider as agents also social entities like organizations, groups and normative systems, so that mental attitudes can be attributed to them- beliefs, desires and goals- and also an autonomous and proactive behavior. We show how the metaphor can be applied also to structure organizations in functional areas and roles, which are described as agents too. Thus, the agent metaphor can play a role similar to the object oriented metaphor which allows structuring objects in component objects. Finally, we discuss how the agent metaphor addresses the problems of control and communication in such structured organizations. 1

In this paper we address the problem of defining roles in organizations like e-trade ones. The methodology we use is to model roles according to the agent metaphor: we attribute to roles mental attitudes, like beliefs, desires and goals, we relate them to the agent’s required expertise and responsibilities, and we model role behavior in game theoretic terms. Analogously, the organization is modelled as an agent which acts as a normative system: it imposes obligations to roles and to the agents playing the roles. 1.

Abstract. In this paper we introduce an ontology based on the notion of agent to represent and reason about social reality. We model social constructions as agents, for example, groups, organizations, normative systems, and roles, and we attribute mental attitudes to them. Roughly, we define obligations or regulative norms as goals of the normative system, constitutive norms as beliefs of the normative system, joint, shared, mutual and social beliefs, desires and goal as beliefs, desires and goals of group, responsibilities of an agent as goals of the role he plays, and the required expertise of an agent as beliefs and actions of the role he plays. In this way, we achieve a uniform framework for a large variety of concepts using a small vocabulary, and, in particular, basing it on notions, like mental attitudes, which are commonly used in agent theories. The proposed ontology is modelled using a description logic. 1

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: We thank the senior editor on the manuscript, V. Sambamurthy, and the anonymous associate editor and reviewers for their many insightful suggestions on earlier

A number of new technologies aimed at automating office work has been developed over the last 20 years with seemingly little impact on overall office productivity. We propose a conceptual model for technology adaptation for business process automation that stresses both technology-organization fit and technologyprocess fit. The goal of our study is to develop a systematic approach that addresses the needs for the organization to be adaptive and for work to be flexible. The technology adaptation model we develop is useful for technology providers in the workflow management area and for business managers who wish to take advantage of the new work-related technologies. 1.

Editor’s Introduction pp. 004- 005

As flourishing, productive open source software (OSS) communities mature, they have to introduce a variety of governance mechanisms to manage the participation of their members and to coordinate the launch of new releases. In contrast to other modes of governance of OSS communities, the Debian community introduced new mechanisms of informal administrative control based on a constitution, elected leaders and new functions attributed to interactive communication channels (like mailing lists or IRC channels) that can provide for community effects (and feedback). We show that these control mechanisms were introduced as a response to emerging innovative opportunities due the usage of source packages and heterogeneous learning processes by different groups within the Debian community,

Abstract. In this paper we introduce organizations and roles in Shoham and Tennenholtz’ artificial social systems, using a normative system. We model how real agents determine the behavior of organizations by playing roles in the organization, and how the organization controls the behavior of agents playing a role in it. We consider the design of an organization in terms of roles and the assignment of agents to roles, and the evolution of organizations. We do not present a complete formalization of the computational problems, but we illustrate our approach by examples. 1

Abstract: Practitioners in Europe and the U.S. recently have proposed two distinct approaches to address what they believe are shortcomings of traditional budgeting practices. One approach advocates improving the budgeting process and primarily focuses on the planning problems with budgeting. The other advocates abandoning the budget and primarily focuses on the performance evaluation problems with budgeting. This paper provides an overview and research perspective on these two recent developments. We discuss why practitioners have become dissatisfied with budgets, describe the two distinct approaches, place them in a research context, suggest insights that may aid the practitioners, and use the practitioner perspectives to identify fruitful areas for research.

Besides business objectives, organizations have control goals concerning how these objectives are met. To achieve the control goals, organizations usually add controls into their business processes (workflows, in automated form). Over time, controls pile up and tangle with other activities, making it difficult to manage and re-engineer evolving processes. In this paper, we propose an architecture that enables separating the control aspects of a process from the operational activities. The proposed aspect architecture improves the flexibility of business process design to incorporate changes in controls and minimize the side-effects of such changes.