The Structure-in-5 as an Agent Architectural Pattern

The structure-in-5 is a model from organization theory used to describe the internal structure of an organization. Since multi-agent systems (MAS) can be structured as organizations of agents, this paper adopts and experiments the structure-in-5 for the design of MAS architectures. We describe the structure-in5 as an organizational pattern, model it in terms of social and intentional concepts using the i* organizational modeling framework, and give some semiformal specification using the Formal Tropos language. The paper also revisits and formalizes, in social and intentional terms, conventional architectural elements commonly used to describe system architectures. The structure-in-5 is applied in the design of the architecture of an e-business example. Part of the architecture is expressed in terms of the revisited architectural elements.