Trust, Control and Autonomy: A Dialectic Relationship - Trust Theory: A Socio-Cognitive and Computational Model - page 208

Interaction-based
Dimension

Closed

Open

Weak

Mild

Specification-
based
Dimension

Strong

Full control

No control

Control-based Dimension

Figure 7.10 The three main dimensions of delegation. (Reproduced by Permission of C 2001 IEEE)

i) After the delegation event, but before the execution of the task;
ii) Run-time, with work-in-progress;
iii) At the end of the performance and the realization of the task; in this case the adjustment
of autonomy will have an effect only on a future delegation (we can consider this case as
a case of learning ).

We will focus here on run-time adjustment, this is particularly important in human-machine
interaction and in multi-agent cooperation, and call it simply adjustment . We will first examine
the problem of adjustable autonomy in a broad sense , i.e. as adjusting the level and the kind
of delegation/adoption (in our terminology delegation conflicts (Castelfranchi and Falcone,
2000c)). We claim that this is the right theoretical frame for understanding also the adjustment
of autonomy in a strict sense, since any autonomy adjustment requires a delegation adjustment ,
but not vice versa (see next section).
In the following, we will analyze the general reasons for delegation/adoption adjustment.
Let us here consider the taxonomy of the adjustments (some of which will be neglected because
meaningless), their nature and their importance. Each of the possible adjustments is bilateral ,
i.e. either the client or the contractor can try to modify the previous delegation.