Delegation in a Role-Based Organization

In an organizational context the norms that apply to an agent depend on the roles he holds in the organization. The deontic characterization of structural roles is defined when the organization is created. But an organization is not a static entity. Among the dynamic phenomena that occur in an organization there are interactions between agents consisting in a transference of obligations or permissions from an agent to another. These kind of interactions are called delegation. In this paper we analyze different ways in which delegation occurs in an organizational context. We argue that the concept of “agent in a role” is relevant to understand delegation. A deontic and action modal logic is used to specify this concept.