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Despite all the research done in the last years on the development of methodologies for designing MAS, there is no methodology suitable for the specification and design of MAS in complex domains where both the agent view and the organizational view can be modelled. Current multi-agent approaches either take a centralist, static approach to organizational design or take an emergent view in which agent interactions are not pre determined, thus making it impossible to make any predictions on the behavior of the whole systems. Most of them also lack a model of the norms in the environment that should rule the (emergent) behavior of the agent society as a whole and/or the actions of individuals. In this paper, we propose a framework for modelling agent organizations, Omni , that allows the balance of global organizational requirements with the autonomy of individual agents. It specifies

Employees are motivated intrinsically as well as extrinsically. Intrinsic motivation is crucial when tacit knowledge in and between teams must be transferred. Organizational forms enable different kinds of motivation and have different capacities to generate and transfer tacit knowledge. Since knowledge generation and transfer are essential for a firm s sustainable competitive advantage, we ask specifically what kinds of motivation are needed to generate and transfer tacit knowledge, as opposed to explicit knowledge.

Performance Excellence (CPE) have played a significant role in the practice of quality management, researchers have been slow to embrace the CPE framework. By viewing the CPE as an integrative model of organizational effectiveness that encompasses a number of cross-functional disciplines, one is led to speculate that a large body of literature relevant to the CPE framework exists. Indirectly, through their functional research, scholars from a variety of disciplines have been investigating the theoretical issues that embody the CPE. This article compares the strategic planning category of the CPE against the scholarly literature. The planning framework embedded in the CPE aligns considerably with the conceptual literature on strategic planning. These findings suggest some validity for the CPE framework, which demonstrates the translation of research into managerial practice and might inspire further research. Key words: action plans, long-range planning, strategy deployment, strategy development The Malcolm Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence (CPE) are designed to help organizations enhance competitiveness through the delivery of everimproving value to customers and improvements of overall organizational performance and capabilities. The CPE serve as a basis for organizational self-assessments, as well as the basis for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. Numerous state and local agencies (Bobrowski and Bantham 1994) and other countries (Powell 1995) have adopted similar award frameworks. As such, the CPE have attracted considerable industry interest. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which manages the National Quality Program

in libraries have been relatively neglected aspects of library administration. Yet the decisions by which a library attempts to control its operations are of major importance to its welfare and effectiveness. Recent theories in management and social psychology have addressed themselves to the implications of participative management and group decision-making, and their findings appear to have important applications to libraries, not the least of which is personnel development. Likert has described in some detail the implications of group decision-making on productivity. Not only does it affect the quality of decisions, but their implications as wel1.l If the involvement of the library staff in determining the library's objectives and its means of attaining them is reflected in thc service the library provides, this factor should be considered as libraries and those responsible for the libraries' operation search for means of improving library service. Research into the power of group influences upon the functioning of organizations has provided increasing evidence of its effect on the achievement of the organization's objectives. One of the behavioral aspects of group influence is participative decision-making, The findings indicate that group decision-making has two major advantages over decision-making imposed unilaterally by management; these are that group decisions tend to be of superior quality and they tend to be more readily accepted by the group. While group decision-making alone appears to be neither adequate nor necessary to assure high productivity, it has been found to be generally characteristic of high production organizations.? Decisions are found to be superior especially

Most empirical tests of the many competing theories of wage rigidity use publicly available data on pay rates and employment that reveal little about the institutions and motivations that explain wage behavior. In order to learn more, some economists have analyzed unusual sources of data or have conducted surveys and experiments. Management scientists and organizational psychologists have for

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Empowerment may be one of the answers to the increasing competition and demanding customers in the financial retail sector, but the relationship between empowerment and profit-oriented behaviour at the service encounter is sparsely documented. This article offers comparative empirical analysis of the impact of recent initiatives on empowerment and related activities in Danish financial institutions. The results indicate that giving decisionmaking authority and autonomy to the individual frontline employees often is a powerful step in the financial service retailers' efforts to increase their competitiveness. In the process of change formal participation only has a moderate supporting impact on performance while changes initiated at the branch offices and the linking of rewards to performance have a notably positive impact on the competitiveness and profit-oriented behaviour of frontline employees. Keywords: Empowerment; Financial services; Implementation; Profit orientation;...

this paper was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation SES8921926 and PYI-9157447. The research in this paper was performed while the second author was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, with support from NSF grant #SBR-9022192

This study was supported in part by a grant to M.I.T. from the