Agent-based Modeling of Human Organizations

Abstract

At present the agent paradigm is often used for computational modeling of human behavior in an organizational setting. However, in many developed models only a limited number of (unrelated) organizational aspects are represented. Furthermore, some of these models make little use of a rich theoretical basis developed in social science. This may undermine the practical feasibility of such models. This paper proposes a formal approach for modeling of characteristics and behavior of agents in organizations, diverse aspects of which are represented using an expressive formal framework. The approach is based on the theoretical findings from social science and enables analysis of how different organizational and environmental factors influence the behavior and performance of agents. The approach is illustrated by a simulation case.