Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
4.3
Organizational Dynamics
The Organizational Dynamics presents the relations between the elements of the Orga-
nizational Structure and the Organizational Entity.
Definition 8
.
The Organizational Dynamics of a Virtual Organization is defined as
φ
=
plays
,
inU nit
,
provides
,
perceives
,
isU nit
where:
2
R
is a function that relates an agent with the set of roles that he is
playing inside the organization.
-
inU nit
:
A
-
plays
:
A
→
2
GR
is the function that describes the groups where an agent is located.
→
2
S
-
provides
:
A
→
represents the set of services that an agent provides.
2
WS
represents the set of workspaces that an agent is able to per-
-
perceives
:
A
→
ceive.
-
isU nit
:
GR
→
OU defines the type of organizational unit instantiated by a group.
Properties of the Relations.
The
plays
,
inU nit
,
provides
and
perceives
relations allow
agents to play different roles, be located in different groups, provide different services
and perceive different workspaces in the organization, respectively. The
isU nit
relation-
ship allows knowing the type of organizational unit that a group is instantiating.
The situation where an agent plays a role inside a unit and a scenario where an agent
is inside an organizational unit playing a role can be checked in equations 12 and 13. It
must be noted that the
Roles
function is recursive, as explained in subsection 4.1.
∀
r
∈
plays
(
a
)
→∃
o
∈
OU
∧∃
g
∈
inU nit
(
a
)
:
isU nit
(
g
)=
o
∧
r
∈
Roles
(
o
)
(12)
∀
g
∈
inU nit
(
a
)
→∃
o
∈
OU
∧
isU nit
(
g
)=
o
∧∃
r
∈
Roles
(
o
)
:
r
∈
plays
(
a
)
(13)
Equation 12 establishes that an agent can only play the roles provided by the groups
where he is located. These roles are the ones provided by the organizational units in-
stantiated by these groups. Equation 13 defines that an agent must play at least one role
from each group where he is located.
In addition, using the
provides
relationship from
φ
, it is possible to define the set of
active services (
AS
) from
OE
. Formally,
AS
=
a
s
∈
provides
(
a
)
(14)
∈
A
4.4
Multi-Agent Systems Based on Virtual Organizations
In previous sections, the different dimensions and entities that compose the state of a VO
at a given time were defined in a formal way. Nevertheless, a VO changes through time,
passing from one state of the organization to another. Thus, it is necessary to define
all the possible states of the organization as well as the allowed transitions between
these states. For this issue, we based our work in the proposal by da Rocha Costa and
Dimuro [14].
