Social Commitment Policies for Formally Specifying the Organisation and Behaviour of Open Agent Societies1

In this paper, a new domain-based organisational model is proposed as an extension of the traditional role-based models for formal agent society specification. The concept of social commitment policies, which govern various aspects of group behaviour, including penalties for individual acts in the context of group activities, is at the heart of this model. The concept of penalty is presented as an important concern in light of the assumption that, even conceived as society members, agents are still autonomous, so they can violate the established social commitments. The different types of social commitment policies are classified, and the interest of their application not only as an organisational abstraction but also as a mechanism for specifying the expected behaviour of the agent society is discussed. It is also shown how deontic, action and temporal (DAT) modal logic will be used in the formal specification of the different types of policies and their related concept of violation. This formalisation will allow agents to reason deliberatively about the existing social norms, the responsibilities proper to their position and the consequences of violating these responsibilities. Finally, attention is paid to the formalisation of policy dynamics by means of illocutionary logic.