A sanction-application mechanism considering commitment levels in hierarchical organizations

The coordination and the control of autonomous agent´s behavior, in Normative Multi Agent Systems, are important for the achievement of systems´ global goal. However, the agents´ preferences may not reflect the preferences expected in the organizational system specification. Then, the occurrence of this conflict causes a decrease in system performance. In this context, organizational models and their social structures (norms and sanctions) have been proposed to improve the agent´s management and agents behavior. However, specify and apply appropriate sanctions, taking account each agent´s level of responsibility, requires an approach that considers individual and collective commitments and their execution. The aim of this work is to propose a mechanism to apply sanctions based on contracts and the hierarchical organization specification, able to be adapted in different application domain. The approach is based in commitment trees, contracts and sanctions in individual and collective levels.