On the relevance of organizational structures for a technology of agreement

Abstract

This paper provides a brief overview of the field of coordination in multi-agent systems, and outlines its relation to current efforts working towards a paradigm for smart, next-generation distributed systems, where coordination is based on the concept of agreement between computational entities. To illustrate the types of mechanisms that we envision to be part of a “technology of agreement”, we provide two examples of how techniques from the field of organisations can be used to foster coordination and agreement in open multiagent systems.