A Semiotic Approach for Distinguishing Responsibilities in Agent-Based Systems

Software agent technology is an important advance in the management of information systems that has brought even more potential to the improvement of efficiency and effectiveness of business systems. Timely access to the right information at the shortest time is important in many of our personal and business activities. Agents are also increasingly needed for interoperation between different applications in business processes. Many researchers have emphasised on mental agency, which is the supposition that software agents should be understood primarily in terms of mental concepts and behaviours such as beliefs and intentions (Singh 1998; Chong and Liu 1999). Software agents are widely seen as a personal helper to human users in the tasks of information management, information processing, information routing, amongst many other tasks. For software agents to provide valuable services, several characteristics must exist. One of these characteristics is that human users delegate its job functions.

[1]  Brian Niblett.  Computer Science and Law , 1980 .

[2]  Oren Etzioni,et al.  A softbot-based interface to the Internet , 1994, CACM.

[3]  Munindar P. Singh.  Multiagent Systems - A Theoretical Framework for Intentions, Know-How, and Communications , 1994, Lecture Notes in Computer Science.

[4]  Alf Ross,et al.  Directives and norms , 1968 .

[5]  Edna Ullmann-Margalit,et al.  The Emergence Of Norms , 1977 .

[6]  Hanifa Shah,et al.  Applying Semiotic Methods To Requirements Recovery , 1999 .

[7]  Michael R. Genesereth,et al.  Software agents , 1994, CACM.

[8]  Kecheng Liu,et al.  Organisational dynamics, social norms and information systems , 1994, 1994 Proceedings of the Twenty-Seventh Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[9]  D. Dennett.  The Intentional Stance. , 1987 .

[10]  R. Stamper.  Information in business and administrative systems , 1973 .

[11]  Donald A. Norman,et al.  How might people interact with agents , 1994, CACM.

[12]  Hyacinth S. Nwana,et al.  The ZEUS Agent Building Tool-kit , 1998 .

[13]  Nicholas R. Jennings,et al.  Intelligent agents: theory and practice , 1995, The Knowledge Engineering Review.

[14]  R. Conte,et al.  Cognitive and social action , 1995 .

[15]  David Eichmann,et al.  2 – Background : Agents in General and Spiders in Particular , 1994 .

[16]  R. K. Stamper.  Extending semiotics for the study of organisations , 2000 .

[17]  Kecheng Liu,et al.  A Semiotic Approach to the Design of Agent-mediated E-commerce Systems , 2000, ISCO.

[18]  Anand S. Rao,et al.  Decision Procedures for Propositional Linear-Time Belief-Desire-Intention Logics , 1995, ATAL.

[19]  Yoav Shoham,et al.  An overview of agent-oriented programming , 1997 .

[20]  Nicholas R. Jennings,et al.  Agent Systems and Applications , 1998, Knowl. Eng. Rev..

[21]  Michael Wooldridge,et al.  Software agent technologies , 1996 .

[22]  Kecheng Liu,et al.  Understanding the roles of signs and norms in organizations - a semiotic approach to information systems design , 2000, Behav. Inf. Technol..