The paper presents our exploration into an organization ontology for the TOVE enterprise model. Its primary focus has been in linking structure and behavior through the concept of empowerment. Empowerment is the right of an organization agent to perform status changing actions. This linkage is critical to the unification of enterprise models and their executability. 1.0

Deontic logic is the logic that deals with actual as well as ideal behavior of systems. In this paper, we survey a number of applications of deontic logic in computer science that have arisen in the eighties, and give a systematic framework in which these applications can be classified. Many applications move in the direction of programming a computer in deontic logic to make the computer prohibit, permit or obligate people to do something. We discuss conditions under which this possibility is realistic and conditions under which it would be admissible to do so.

The Kanger-Lindahl theory of normative positions attempts to use a combination of deontic logic (the logic of obligation and permission) and a logic of action/agency to give a formal account of obligations, duties, rights, and other complex normative concepts. This paper presents a generalisation and further development of this theory, together with methods for its automation and application to practical examples. The resulting theory is intended to be applied in the representation and analysis of laws, regulations, and contracts, in the specification of aspects of computer systems, in multi-agent systems, and as a contribution to the formal theory of organisations. Particular attention is paid to representations at varying levels of detail and the relationships that hold between them. The last part presents Norman-G, an automated support system intended to facilitate application of the theory to the analysis of practical problems, with a small example to illustrate its use.

organisation ontology for the TOVE enterprise model. The ontology puts forward a number of conceptualizations for modeling organisations: agents, roles, positions, goals, communication, authority, commitment. Its primary focus has been in linking structure and behaviour through the concept of empowerment. Empowerment is the right of an organisation agent to perform status changing actions. This linkage is critical to the unification of enterprise models and their executability.

Feature interaction is a problem mostly considered in the context of telephony features, but present in other domains. In this paper we consider policies (independent of the system that they control) as an application domain for feature interaction techniques. We present the feature interaction problem as it occurs in the policy context and show how it can be approached. We give a taxonomy for policy conflict, and introduce a generic architecture for handling policy conflict.

The logic of norms, called deontic logic, has been used to specify normative constraints for information systems. For example, one can specify in deontic logic the constraints that a book borrowed from a library should be returned within three weeks, and that if it is not returned, the library should send a reminder. Thus, the notion of obligation to perform an action arises naturally in system specification.

this paper and we take it up again in the discussion at the end of this paper

In this paper the author describes a formal language for communication based on linguistics—more specifically, a theory of natural language communication and models of natural language conversations. The language has a small number of general message types which are formally defined by their intended effects on the recipient. For each message type he defines a standard, automated method of responding that depends only on the message type and is independent of the message’s content. For more complex conversations he provides methods for responding that do depend on the content. In this system, a message’s sender—automated or human—constructs and sends a message knowing that he cannot know, but can only predict, how it will be interpreted. The agent receiving the message interprets it and then uses it as a basis for inferring how it should respond. The message interpretation mechanism for this language is reusable, modular and shared by all applications. The benefit of this communication system is that it makes the communication infrastructure more flexible, easier to modify, easier to expand, and more capable. 1

In this paper we argue for a treatment of obligations, permissions, and prohibitions that differs from the standard treatment of these notions in deontic logic. Firstly, we propose that instantiated norms be treated as individual, identified entities- that is, variables that can be quantified over- rather than simply as logical operators as in Standard Deontic Logic. This allows us to refer to specific instances of obligations, permissions, and prohibitions. We explain why we believe that norms take, as their arguments, sets of occurrences, rather than simply propositions as in the standard treatment. Further, we argue that specific, identified norms themselves are brought about by occurrences. We provide an account of the life-cycle of norms: we explain how individual identified norm-instances are generated from general norms through functions of occurrences, and how each such instance’s life may end with its fulfillment, violation, or nullification. In addition, we suggest that norms are situated: that they must be tagged with the context in which they were written or spoken. This is necessary for conflict specification, detection, and resolution purposes. Finally, we tag our conclusions with a time, so that, without contradiction, we may nonmonotonically conclude different results as cases and norms vary over time. The Life and Times of Identified, Situated, and Conflicting Norms 1

The theory of normative positions attempts to apply a combination of deontic logic and a logic of action/agency to the formalisation of the `Hohfeldian concepts' (duty, right, power, privilege, etc.) and other complex normative relations between agents. This paper is concerned with the practical applicability of the theory to such tasks as formalising the content of an existing set of regulations, designing a new set of regulations, or rening aspects of a computer system specication, with particular attention to the usefulness of the action component as a representational device. Points are made by reference to a simple example concerning rules in a car park. The second part of the paper covers three simple extensions: the representation of `permitted to bring about', a treatment of interpersonal control relations, and the ability to distinguish between being permitted to bring about a new state of aairs and being permitted to sustain a state of aairs that already exists...