Intention is commitment with expectation

Modal logics with possible worlds semantics can be used to represent mental states such as belief, goal, and intention, allowing one to formally describe the rational behavior of agents. Agent??s beliefs and goals are typically represented in these logics by primitive modal operators. However, the representation of agent??s intentions varies greatly between theories. Some logics characterize intention as a primitive operator, while others define intention in terms of more primitive constructs. Taking the latter approach is a theory due to Philip Cohen and Hector Levesque, under which intentions are a special form of commitment or persistent goal. The theory has motivated theories of speech acts and joint intention and innovative applications in multiagent systems and industrial robotics. However, Munindar Singh shows the theory to have certain logical inconsistencies and permit certain absurd scenarios. This thesis presents a modification of the theory that preserves the desirable aspects of the original while addressing the criticism of Singh. This is achieved by the introduction of an additional operator describing the achievement of expectations, refined assumptions, and new defi- nitions of intention. The modified theory gives a cogent account of the rational balance between agents?? action and deliberation, and suggests the use of meansends reasoning in agent implementations. A rule-based reasoner in Jess facilitates evaluation of the predictiveness and intuitiveness of the theory, and provides a prototypical agent based on the theory

Impacts of job and organizational satisfaction, and organizational commitment on turnover intention in Thai public sector engineers

This study addresses the causal linkages between attitudinal determinants of employees' turnover. Using data from a survey of 408 public sector engineers working in sixteen organizations in Thailand, this study examines the relationships of job satisfaction, organizational satisfaction, and organizational commitment with turnover intention. Impacts of various factors, particularly the effect of self-efficacy expectation and pension, are also analyzed on turnover intention. Pearson correlation and path analysis through multiple regressions are conducted for the data analysis. The results are: (1) turnover intention is significantly inversely associated with both job and organizational satisfaction, and organizational commitment: (2) path analysis partially supports that job and organizational attitudes relate differently to job and organizational behavioral intention: organizational commitment is more strongly linked with turnover intention than is job satisfaction: (3) multiple regressions do not confirm the importance of self-efficacy expectation as an independent factor of job satisfaction or the importance of pension as a predicted antecedent of turnover intention

The Predictor of external environment, occupational stress, job satisfaction and intent to leave towards organizational commitment

The purpose of this article was to determine the relationship between external environment, occupational stress, job satisfaction and intent to leave towards organizational commitment. A convenience sample group of 130 employees of Northport (Malaysia) Bhd. were selected over 2272 of total population at year 2009. A self–administered survey instrument was developed to measure and test the employee external environment, occupational stress, job satisfaction, and intent to leave towards organizational commitment. Using SPSS 16.0, two statistical tests were employed to test study hypotheses. First, by measuring correlation, a Pearson correlation coefficient analysis was used to identify the relationships between predictor and criterion variables. Likewise, multiple regression analysis was used to determine the effect between external environment, occupational stress and job satisfaction among related variables. The findings reveal that job satisfaction, occupational stress and intent to leave does affect organizational commitment. At the same time, occupational stress gives impact to the intent to leave. Unlike external environments, it does not effect on both organizational commitment and intent to leave. Among predictor variable towards the organizational commitment, the job satisfaction were produced strong relationship. Keyword: environment, occupational stress and job satisfaction and organizational commitmen

The Death of Reliance

In the mid-1970s, it was an article offaith that contract was not properly conceived as a means by which persons could, by their own choice, make law for themselves to govern their relations. Instead, contract was thought best conceived as the rectification of injuries persons may have caused by their verbal conduct in much the same way that persons have a duty to rectify the injuries caused by their physical acts. With contracts, these injuries consisted of detrimental reliance on the words of another. So conceived, both contract and tort duties are imposed by law, and do not arise from the parties\u27 consent. Thus contract law is conceptually indistinguishable from tort law. The doctrinal implications of this reliance-based conception of contract were twofold. First, since duties were imposed by law rather than being the product of the parties\u27 consent, we need not concern ourselves with many of the niceties of finding mutual assent in the formation stage. Second, if reliance was the basis of contract, then the normal expectation measure of recovery was also suspect--justified, if at all, as an indirect way to protect what Fuller and Perdue labeled the reliance interest. Indeed, it says much about the conventional wisdom during the 1960s and 1970s that Fuller and Perdue\u27s justly esteemed 1936 article, The Reliance Interest in Contract Damages, received far greater attention than Fuller\u27s later Consideration and Form

The Content of the Psychological Work Contract for Frontline Police Officers

Adding to the field of knowledge on the content of the psychological work contract, structured interviews with 35 frontline police officers generated 662 responses relating to the content of the psychological work contract for this employment sector. Analysis of these responses resulted in the development of an initial two-component measure of the contract. One component (17 items) reflected the obligations arising from the promises officers believed the organisation had made to them. The other component (19 items) reflected the obligations arising from the promises officers believed they had made to the organisation. The measure was included in a survey completed by 84 frontline police officers. Factor analysis revealed two factors in each component. For the organisation's obligations component, one factor reflected obligations related more to the organisational environment, whereas the other factor reflected obligations related more to the job environment. For the employee's obligations component, one factor reflected obligations related more to behaviours on the job, whereas the other factor reflected obligations related more to the pursuit of development opportunities. The nature of the relationships that emerged between the psychological contract and the nomological network variables included in the study provide strong support for the validity of this measure of the psychological contract

“‘What on Earth Was I Thinking?’ How Anticipating Plan’s End Places an Intention in Time”

How must you think about time when you form an intention? Obviously, you must think about the time of action. Must you frame the action in any broader prospect or retrospect? In this essay I argue that you must: you thereby commit yourself to a specific prospect of a future retrospect – a retrospect, indeed, on that very prospect. In forming an intention you project a future from which you will not ask regretfully, referring back to your follow-through on that intention, “What on earth was I thinking?” I argue that this broader attitude expresses the self-accountability necessary for practical commitment

Promise, Agreement, Contract

It is natural to wonder about contract law’s relationship to the morality of promises and agreements. This Chapter distinguishes two ways to conceive of that relationship. First, parties’ agreement-based moral obligations might figure into the explanation of contract law—into an account of its functions or justifications. Contract law might serve to enforce parties’ first-order performance obligations, to enforce second-order remedial obligations, to support the culture of making and keeping agreements more generally, or at least to do no harm to that culture or to people’s ability to act morally. Second, contract can be understood as the legal analog to promise. Both contract and promise enable people to undertake new obligations to one another when they wish. Each is a type of normative power, the one legal, the other moral. The Chapter concludes by arguing that these two ways of thinking about contract law are not mutually exclusive. Contract law both imposes on parties to exchange agreements a legal obligation to perform for reasons independent of the parties’ possible contractual intent, and confers on them the power to undertake that legal obligation when they so intend because they so intend