Towards an Institutional Environment Using Norms for Contract Performance

A strong research emphasis is being given towards regulating interoperable multi-agent environments through norms and institutions. We are concerned with environments in which agents form together virtual organizations leading to cooperation agreements that can be enforced. An electronic institution provides a coordination framework facilitating automatic contract establishment and providing an enforceable normative environment. We introduce the notion of contextualized norms within our institutional framework, and develop on a model of institutional reality, taking into account institutional roles and agents’ statements, with the aim of providing a contract monitoring service. Our proposal describes how to use norms to formalize cooperation agreements and operational contracts, and how to monitor and detect contract violations.