Formalization of a voting protocol for virtual organizations

ABSTRACT

A voting protocol for decision-making in virtual organizations is presented. In an agent-based virtual organization the functions of formation, management and dissolution of the organization are passed to software processes. Each phase in this life-cycle requires decision making: an ostensibly fair way for independent agents to make decisions is to take a vote. Accordingly, this paper formalizes a protocol for voting. The emphasis is on characterising the powers, permissions, obligations and even sanctions of the voters, using a norm-governed approach to agent societies. The specification language is the Event Calculus, and its animation is informative with respect to a full implementation. It is well-known that various types of ad hoc alliance of autonomous entities require voting procedures, and a normative specification of the interactions is therefore beneficial for many aspects of self-organization and self-management.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.2 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
        I.2.11 Distributed Artificial Intelligence

General Terms:
Theory

Keywords:
multi-agent systems, virtual organizations, voting