Organisational change through influence

摘要

Influence is a phenomenon underpinning many types of interactions in both human and artificial organisations, and has a significant impact on the operation of the organisation. If influence can be examined at the organisational level, instead of at the level of the agents involved, engineers can better understand an organisation’s robustness to structural, behavioural and population changes. In this paper we present the Model of Organisational Change using Agents (MOChA) as a means to formally specify, check and simulate organisations using agents, particularly with a view to determining the impact of influence on the operation of an organisation. This formalisation of influence is not specific to our model, and is relevant and adaptable to any organisational model in which explicit relationships among roles of agents are formed.