The Structure of Concern Project compares many theoretical models from many disciplines to the Adizes PAEI model, arguing that they must all be reflecting the same underlying phenomenon. One concern structure model is described below.
Multi-agent systems sometimes need to recruit the coordinated efforts of a number of agents to accomplish a task. In the framework introduced by Sims, Corkill and Lesser (2004), this is called organizational design and instantiation. It is a team-forming process of selecting goals, requirements, agents, and resources and assigning responsibilities and roles to each agent selected for the team. Since multi-agent systems need to do this no matter what application domain they operate in, a generic organizational design model is needed that encapsulates all of the general features of this function.
Sims et al. describe an organizational design process involving four major components: organizational goals, role-goal bindings, agent-role-goal bindings and coordination & management goals, described below in PAEI order:
P – Agent-Role-Goal Bindings: Provide the capabilities that will implement the organizational design.
A – Role-Goal Bindings: Given the parameters of the goals, task environment and performance requirements, design the organizational structure in terms of domain specific agent roles, productive and managerial.
E – Organizational Goals: Using information about performance requirements and the task environment, establish goals around which organizations can be planned.
I – Coordination & Management Goals: Monitor the Agent-Role-Goal bindings and provide feedback to the Role-Goal binding module about the effectiveness and efficiency of the current organizational design.
