FORM – A Sociologically Founded Framework for Designing Self-Organization of Multiagent Systems

We propose FORM, a new Framework for self-Organization and Robustness in Multiagent systems. This framework supports the design of task-assignment multiagent systems in a way that is informed by sociological theory. It is founded on the habitus-field-theory of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. In accordance to this theory, we consider the special quality of "organization" as an autonomous and self-organizing social entity with clear distinction to the coordination via social interactions. Organizations are viewed as both "autonomous social fields" and "corporate agents", which are competing with other organizations in the same domain. While our framework makes no claims about an underlying agent architecture, it consists of a matrix of mechanisms for delegation (task delegation and social delegation), which we consider a central concept to define organizational relationships. Using this matrix as a basic toolset, we propose a spectrum of seven types for the structure of multiagent systems, defined by qualitatively different relationships.