The problem this paper addresses is the tension between descriptive and normative approaches to design theory and methodology. Descriptive approaches typically seek to document, formalize and/or automate existing ad hoc design methods, towards the goal of making current best practices available to all. In contrast, normative approaches attempt to improve upon existing design practices, towards ...

Within the area of multi-agent systems, normative systems are a widely used framework for the coordination of interdependent activities. A crucial problem associated with normative systems is that of synthesising norms that effectively accomplish a coordination task and whose compliance forms a rational choice for the agents within the system. In this work, we introduce a framework for the synt...

This paper describes a survey of normative agent-based social simulation models. These models are examined from the perspective of the foundations of social theory. Agent-based modelling contributes to the research program of methodological individualism. Norms are a central concept in the role theoretic concept of action in the tradition of Durkheim and Parsons. This paper investigates to what...

This paper proposes a framework based on Defeasible Logic (DL) to reason about normative modifications. We show how to express them in DL and how the logic deals with conflicts between temporalised normative modifications. Some comments will be given with regard to the phenomenon of retroactivity.

Health gap measures, such as the DALY, are a quantification of the gap between the current health status in a population and a stated goal for population health. This goal can be understood as an ideal situation in which everyone in a population lives into old age free of disease. Health gaps are the addition of time lost due to premature mortality, as measured against the normative survivorshi...

This paper empirically investigates the impact of normative social influence on group homogeneity in media preferences and group meeting outcomes in a setting where 58 student groups voluntarily used various communication media over a three-month software development project period. Group homogeneity in media preferences was argued to mediate the impact of normative social influence on group me...

global health research is essentially a normative undertaking: we use it to propose policies that ought to be implemented. to arrive at a normative conclusion in a logical way requires at least one normative premise, one that cannot be derived from empirical evidence alone. but there is no widely accepted normative premise for global health, and the actors with the power to set policies may use...

In this paper, the set-theoretic approach in the logical theory of normative systems is extended using Broome’s definition of the normative code function. The syntax and semantics for first order metanormative language is defined, and metanormative language is applied in the formalization of the basic principles in Broome’s approach and in the construction of a logical typology of normative sys...