Conflicts within and for Collaboration

Abstract

In this chapter we address possible conflicts arising between an agent (the “client”) delegating some tasks to some other agent, and this agent (the “contractor”) adopting and/or satisfying those tasks; conflicts which are either due to the intelligence and the initiative of the delegated agent or to an inappropriate delegation by the client. We present a plan-based definition of delegation, adoption and task, and a theory of different kinds and levels of delegation and adoption. We examine several kinds of conflict due to different cooperative attitudes between the two agents: conflicts about the kind of delegation/reliance; conflicts about the level of autonomy; and conflicts about initiative. In this perspective, we also analyze: role conflicts (where roles are reduced to classes of delegated tasks); and the systematic but functional (collaborative) violation of norms, rules, prescriptions, a very important form of conflict for the dynamics and the evolution of organizations.

We neither analyze conflicts due to some misunderstanding or to the helper’s personal interest, nor conflicts about the delegation of control. We claim that delegation and its related conflicts are the core of the interaction among any kind of autonomous agents and are relevant for modelling MAS, organizations, and user-agents interaction. In fact, in order to exploit local knowledge and local adaptation, delegation cannot be fully specified.