One of the most important developments in recent sociological theory is the relationship between ‘social structure’ and ‘social agency.’ According to George Ritzer (1996), this issue has been mostly investigated among European theorists, while, on the other side, the parallel issue of the ‘micro-macro linkage’ has attracted the main interest in American sociological theory. Again, according to ...

People with dementia have been assumed to possess weak or even no agency, so this paper provides a novel contribution to academic debate by examining their actual potential for agency. The author draws on findings from a qualitative study of everyday decision-making by people with dementia that aimed to identify the role of social factors (such as gender) in influencing their involvement in dec...

In this paper, I motivate, define, and illustrate the notion of computationally grounded theories of agency. A theory of agency is said to be computationally grounded if we can give the theory an interpretation in terms of some concrete computational model. This requirement is essential if we are to claim that the theories we develop can be understood as expressing properties of real multiagent...

INTRODUCTION Collaboration was legislated in the delivery of integrated care in the early 2000s in the UK. This research explored how the reality of practice met the rhetoric of collaboration. THEORY The paper is situated against a theoretical framework of structure, agency, identity and empowerment. Collectively and contextually these concepts inform the proposed model of 'collaborative agen...

I offer here a new theory of moral agency –why people are ethical, why they are not, and how to get them to be more ethical. I look broadly at evidence from the new brain sciences, systems theory, and Spinoza’s philosophy to address the question. Spinoza’s vision of the infinitely expansive boundaries of the self as we progressively take in and embrace the world, and also extrude ourselves into...

Social cognitive theory adopts an agentic perspective to human development, adaptation, and change. The theory distinguishes among three modes of agency: personal agency exercised individually; proxy agency in which people secure desired outcomes by influencing others to act on their behalf; and collective agency in which people act in concert to shape their future. Contentious dualisms pervade...

Interactive drama has been discussed for a number of years as a new AI-based interactive experience (Laurel 1986, Bates 1992). While there has been substantial technical progress in building believable agents (Bates, Loyall and Reilly 1992, Blumberg 1996, Hayes-Roth, van Gent and Huber 1996), and some technical progress in interactive plot (Weyhrauch 1997), no work has yet been completed which ...

Abstract The sense of agency – the subjective feeling being in control our own actions is one central aspect phenomenology action. Computational models provided important contributions toward unveiling mechanisms underlying individual In particular, believed to be related match between actual and predicted consequences (comparator model). study joint action, are even more necessary understand d...

Property rights theory has common antecedents with contractual theories of the firm such as transaction costs and agency theories, and is yet distinct from these theories. We illustrate fundamental theoretical principles derived from these three theories by analyzing the business case of oil field unitization. Theoretical principles and application of theory to oil field unitization are each su...