Human-agent collectives

We live in a world where a host of computer systems, distributed throughout our physical and information environments, are increasingly implicated in our everyday actions. Computer technologies impact all aspects of our lives and our relationship with the digital has fundamentally altered as computers have moved out of the workplace and away from the desktop. Networked computers, tablets, phones and personal devices are now commonplace, as are an increasingly diverse set of digital devices built into the world around us. Data and information is generated at unprecedented speeds and volumes from an increasingly diverse range of sources. It is then combined in unforeseen ways, limited only by human imagination. People’s activities and collaborations are becoming ever more dependent upon and intertwined with this ubiquitous information substrate. As these trends continue apace, it is becoming apparent that many endeavours involve the symbiotic interleaving of humans and computers. Moreover, the emergence of these close-knit partnerships is inducing profound change. Rather than issuing instructions to passive machines that wait until they are asked before doing anything, we will work in tandem with highly inter-connected computational components that act autonomously and intelligently (aka agents). As a consequence, greater attention needs to be given to the balance of control between people and machines. In many situations, humans will be in charge and agents will predominantly act in a supporting role. In other cases, however, the agents will be in control and humans will play the supporting role. We term this emerging class of systems human-agent collectives (HACs) to reflect the close partnership and the flexible social interactions between the humans and the computers. As well as exhibiting increased autonomy, such systems will be inherently open and social. This means the participants will need to continually and flexibly establish and manage a range of social relationships. Thus, depending on the task at hand, different constellations of people, resources, and information will need to come together, operate in a coordinated fashion, and then disband. The openness and presence of many distinct stakeholders means participation will be motivated by a broad range of incentives rather than diktat. This article outlines the key research challenges involved in developing a comprehensive understanding of HACs. To illuminate this agenda, a nascent application in the domain of disaster response is presented

Institutional communication revisited: Preferences, opportunity structures and scientific expertise in policy networks

Information exchange in policy networks is usually attributed to preference similarity, influence reputation, social trust and institutional actor roles. We suggest that political opportunity structures and transaction costs play another crucial role and estimate a rich statistical network model on tie formation in the German toxic chemicals policy domain. The results indicate that the effect of preference similarity is absorbed by other determinants while opportunity structures indeed have to be taken into account. We also find that different types of information exchange operate in complementary, but not necessarily congruent, ways.

Music and dance as a coalition signaling system

Evidence suggests that humans have neurological specializations for music processing, but a compelling adaptationist account of music and dance is lacking. The sexual selection hypothesis cannot easily account for the widespread performance of music and dance in groups (especially synchronized performances), and the social bonding hypothesis has severe theoretical difficulties. Humans are unique among the primates in their ability to form cooperative alliances between groups in the absence of consanguineal ties. We propose that this unique form of social organization is predicated on music and dance. Music and dance may have evolved as a coalition signaling system that could, among other things, credibly communicate coalition quality, thus permitting meaningful cooperative relationships between groups. This capability may have evolved from coordinated territorial defense signals that are common in many social species, including chimpanzees. We present a study in which manipulation of music synchrony significantly altered subjects’ perceptions of music quality, and in which subjects’ perceptions of music quality were correlated with their perceptions of coalition quality, supporting our hypothesis. Our hypothesis also has implications for the evolution of psychological mechanisms underlying cultural production in other domains such as food preparation, clothing and body decoration, storytelling and ritual, and tools and other artifacts

The NGOs, social constructors in the domain of occupying the labor force. The case of Ruhama Foundation

Among the Romanian NGOs, the case of the Ruhama Foundation is a success story. Research undertaken by us captures the main determinants of its success: the quality of the human resources, the strategic management performance and determination (motivation) of the members of the organization. All those have generated complex strategies designed to change the attitudes, the values and even the organizational structure. The diversification of the organization activity, initially focused exclusively on social problems of vulnerable groups, led to a preventive approach to vulnerability respectively of the economic coordinates that allow the identification of the social inclusion and the preventing exclusion. This gave rise to the center “Careers” which offers programs of self-knowledge and career guidance, professional training or retraining correlated with the existing labor market needs, and also the desires and the possibilities and potential beneficiaries of these courses. Our research, conducted in several stages and using various research methods and tools in the context of appreciative inquiry (questionnaires, individual interviews and focus group interviews type), decrypts the process by which the organization is discovered and rediscovers itself, with its potential, values, and desires, based on the opportunities related to the environment in which it operates and it constructs on this basis a new architecture not only to maintain itself on the market, but even to turn it in a social actor, a genuine partner of bodies empowered to ensure social welfare and a promoter of best practice models.NGOs; Social constructors; Appreciative inquiry; Employment; Intraorganizational values; Social architecture

Environmental Innovations: Institutional Impacts on Co-operations for Sustainable Development

A suitable strategy for achieving sustainable development is to foster environmental innovations. Environmental innovations, however, suffer from so-called "double externalities", because apart from innovation spillovers they also improve the quality of public environmental goods, which can be used without cost by free riders. Those innovation spillovers can be avoided through co-operation. Furthermore co-operations can be considered as advantageous because environmental innovations often depend on interaction in research and development, production, selling and disposal. This paper analyzes as to what extent institutional factors impact co-operative arrangements of innovative organizations in the development of new environmental technologies. It applies a multi-dimensional institutional analysis focusing not only on institutional arrangements which exist among organizations but also on opportunities and constraints provided by the institutional environment in which these organizations are embedded. Expanding the existing research we will conclude what kind of policy measure may support the success within networks of environmental oriented innovators.Environmental innovation, Co-operation, Sustainability, Institutional analysis, Policy measures

Exogenous coalition formation in the e-marketplace based on geographical proximity

This paper considers a model for exogenous coalition formation in e-marketplaces. Using the informational advantage e-retailer creates coalitions of customers based on geographical proximity. Most of the literature regards this process as endogenous: a coalition leader bundles eventual purchases together in order to obtain a better bargaining position. In contrast - and in response to what is being observed in business practice - we analyse a situation in which an existing e-retailer exogenously forms customers' coalitions. Results of this study are highly encouraging. Namely, we demonstrate that even under highly imperfect warehouse management schemes leading to contagion eects, suggested combined delivery service may oer signifficant efficiency gains as well as opportunities for Pareto-improvement.Coalition formation, e-commerce, multi-agent systems, consumer satisfaction, demand planning, warehouse management.

The Emergence of Institutions

This paper analyzes how institutions aimed at coordinating economic interactions may appear. We build a model in which agents play a prisoners’ dilemma game in a hypothetical state of nature. Agents can delegate the task of enforcing cooperation in interactions to one of them in exchange for a proper compensation. Two basic commitment problems stand in the way of institution formation. The first one is the individual commitment problem that arises because an agent chosen to run the institution may prefer to renege ex post. The second one is a “collective commitment” problem linked to the lack of binding agreements on the fee that will be charged by the centre once it is designated. This implies first that a potentially socially efficient institution may fail to arise because of the lack of individual incentives, and second that even if it arises, excessive rent extraction by the institution may imply a sub-optimal efficiency level, explaining the heterogeneity of observed institutional arrangements. An institution is less likely to arise in small groups with limited endowments, but also when the underlying commitment problem is not too severe. Finally, we show that the threat of secession by a subset of agents may endogenously solve part of the second commitment problem.Institution, Coordination, State of nature, Secession.

Protection Motivation Theory and Contingent Valuation: Perceived Realism, Threat and WTP Estimates for Biodiversity Protection

We report on a discrete-choice CV study conducted in Germany to value the WTP for biodiversity protection in less developed countries. To systematically investigate survey realism and subjective threat assessment from the loss of biodiversity described in the scenario the study includes questions to uncover the constructs of Protection Motivation Theory, which is introduced to the CV literature. The patterns of responses to such questions are analysed using an Expectation-Maximization algorithm to derive class membership probabilities. These are found to match the predictions of Protection Motivation Theory and systematically improve the logistic analysis of the WTP responses.Biodiversity valuation, Protection motivation theory, Latent class analysis, Expectation-Maximization algorithm, Contingent valuation