A Norm-Based Organization Management System

Virtual organizations are conceived as an effective mechanism for ensuring coordination and global goal fulfilment of an open system, in which heterogeneous entities (agents or services) interact and might also present self-interested behaviours. Organizations describe the system functionality, structure and dynamics. However, available tools rarely give support for these organizational abstractions. The THOMAS multi-agent architecture allows the development of open multi-agent applications. It provides a useful framework for the development of virtual organizations, on the basis of a service-based approach. In this paper, the Organization Management System component of the THOMAS architecture is presented. The Organization Management System is in charge of the organization life-cycle process, including the normative management. It provides a set of structural, informative and dynamic services, which allow describing both specification and administration features of the structural elements of the organization and their dynamics. Moreover, it makes use of a normative language for controlling the service request, provision and register. In this paper, the Organization Management System and its implementation are detailed.