Information Technology Reference
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where: RoleHier represents the hierarchy between roles of the organization;
Contains defines the topology of the organization by means of relations be-
tween organizational units; and Roles defines the roles that are located inside
an organizational unit.
DimRelations allows relating this dimension with others, through the element
OU, and can be formalized as:
2 N
Norms :
OU
2 S
Services :
OU
DimRelations =
2 G
Goals :
OU
2 WS
Workspaces : OU
where: Norms defines the norms, described in the normative dimension, which
rule an OU; Services relates an OU with the services that it contains; Goals
describe the objectives that are necessary to be reached inside an OU; and
Workspaces details the workspaces (see Definition 4) where an OU can be
located.
Properties of the Relations. The social relation in f is symmetrical, since a role can
provide information to a second role, and viceversa; transitive, since agents can build
an information chain, and reflexive as an agent can send information to himself. The
relations col and sup are both asymmetrical, since an agent cannot monitor or super-
vise the agent which is monitoring or supervising him; reflexive, because an agent can
collaborate or supervise himself; and transitive, allowing to create a command chain
inside the organization.
The compatibility relation ( comp ) has reflexive and transitive properties, because a
role is compatible with itself and a role is compatible with the roles that have a compat-
ibility relation with its compatible roles. It is interesting to notice that the comp relation
is not symmetrical (e.g. comp ( r 1 , r 2 ) not always implies comp ( r 2 , r 1 ) ). For example, the
relation comp ( Pro f essor , Teacher ) is correct, because a professor can work as a teacher
in every moment, but a teacher might not be capable of playing the role of professor.
Finally, relations RoleHier and comp are related, since an agent playing a specialized
role is capable of playing its generalized role. Formally:
r 1 , r 2
R : RoleHier ( r 1 , r 2 )
comp ( r 2 , r 1 )
(1)
Let r 1 , r 2
R be two roles belonging to OS . The information, collaboration and super-
vision relations define the following relations in an implicit way:
sup ( r 1 , r 2 )
col ( r 2 , r 1 )
(2)
comp ( r 2 , r 1 ) (3)
This means that a supervision relation between two agents implies that a supervised
agent will collaborate with a supervisor agent to help him to reach his objectives. Also,
a collaboration relation between two roles implies that an information link between
them exists and the second role of the relation is compatible with the first one.
col ( r 1 , r 2 )
in f ( r 1 , r 2 )
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