Anticipating and Resolving Conflicts During Organisational Change

Virtual organisations can be regarded as sets of roles that introduce normative directives for agents joining such organisations by adopting these roles. An agent in a specific role holds a set of obligations, permissions and prohibitions that govern its practical reasoning. In adopting such a role, it commits to fulfill its obligations. A specific problem poses organisational change. In such a situation, the normative directives within the organisation may change and an agent may experience normative changes to the role (or set of roles) it has adopted. Such changes can create conflicts – the agent may not be able to determine whether the actions it deploys for fulfilling its obligations are allowed or forbidden options. Means for disambiguating the normative position of an agent become a necessity. In this paper, the NoA model of norm-governed agency is described. Agents based on this model are governed by norms in their practical reasoning. This model specifically deals with organisational change with the goal to make an agent robust against possible norm conflicts. Based on the characteristics of the NoA model, a classification of possible conflicts is presented and means for detection and resolution provided.