norm analysis--Salty

SOCTR/02/03

Norm Recording – an extension of von Wright

Andy Salter

School of Computing StaffordshireUniversity PO Box 334 Beaconside Staffordshire ST18 0DG

Email: a.m.salter@staffs.ac.uk

Norm Recording – an extension of Von WrightSOCTR 02/03

Abstract

Norms are the rules, implicit and explicit, that govern the behaviour of agents, howthe agents behave and communicate. Capturing the norms by which an organisationoperates increases the level of semantics of the organisation being modelled andreveals details of how information is used within the organisation, how it iscommunicated between agents and how agents may act when information isperceived.

There have been various classifications of norms proposed. This paper uses the socialpsychology classification proposed by Stamper which divides norms into perceptual,denotative, evaluative, cognitive and behavioural. The behavioural norms are thoseusually recorded and used in modelling organisations. This paper reports on atemplate developed to record the information which makes up the parts of abehavioural norm, based on the formation of norms which was proposed by vonWright.

The template divides a norm into five parts: agent details, information required,triggers, the action to be taken and detailed norm specification. A software tool hasbeen developed to assist in recording norms and is presented in the report.

1. Introduction

Norms are the rules, written and unwritten, implicit and explicit by which humanbehaviour has been governed since the formation of social groups where two or morehuman agents have interacted.

Norms are defined and created by members of a society and affect the attitudes,

actions and behaviour of themselves and other members of the society. A society, andthe communities, cultures or social groups within the society, is defined by these‘shared’ norms.

Norms have the general form if condition then consequence

or more precisely, because all norms refer to an agent of some sort if some condition exists then an agent takes some action

Stamper et al. (2000) developed the social psychology classification of normswhich includes:

Perceptual norms. These are the most basic of the norms. They are concerned withthe way in which we divide up the world into the phenomena to which we attachsigns. It is only possible to represent norms explicitly when we have the signs to doso. (We must perceive a state of affairs before we can take any action).

Evaluative norms. These norms are used to evaluate the phenomena that we perceive.This evaluation may be more than the physical existence of an object, it may includethe ‘social effect’ of that object on the agent and surrounding area. For example, atable has two boundaries – a physical one in that it commands space which peopleneed to sit at it and a social boundary. A person passing will avoid space related to thetable beyond the physical space that it occupies.

page203/10/2002

Norm Recording – an extension of Von WrightSOCTR 02/03

Denotative norms. These are culturally dependent where ‘culture’ may include

community or social group. Our systems of value, the result of evaluative norms, arelargely determined by our culture or sub-culture.

Cognitive norms tell us about structures and cause-and-effect relationships. These arethe informal cognitive elements in our norm system.

Behavioural norms are the ones we think of most readily – these are the norms whichdetermine how agents should behave given certain conditions and define what anagent should do to achieve a state of affairs given certain conditions. Behaviouralnorms make up the majority of the norms expressed in organisations. Behaviouralnorms always involve an agent and some form of action.

Norms have also been applied to agents as defined in artificial intelligence (AI). Filipe(Filipe 2000) lists seven different forms of AI agents. The behaviour of these agentsis, as with the human agents, governed by norms, the agents cannot, yet, takeresponsibility for their actions; they work on the behalf of humans. The normsapplicable to the two sets of agents, human and AI are not dissimilar, much of thework that has produced norms for the AI agents being based on social and cognitivetheories, (Neisser 1976, Conte and Castelfranchi 1995, Castelfranchi et al. 1998,Saam and Harrer 1999).

Behavioural norms require the subject agent to act more directly. In this case the

attitude adopted by the agent will be one of being obligated, permitted or prohibited toact in a certain way. (These are termed the deontic conditions and may also appear inthe form of ‘must’, ‘may’ or ‘must not’ or ‘should’, ‘shall’ or ‘should not’.)

To apply a norm the subject needs information about the condition, the current stateof affairs as perceived by the agent. Evaluation of these states of affairs leads to theselection of potential norms by which the agent may act. This evaluation is the inputfor the norms. Selection of potential norms may immediately lead to the generation ofinformation about the subject’s attitude, although the attitude may remain hidden untilthe norm-subject performs an action. The result of the action part of the norm is itselfperceived by the agent and other agents, this perceived result functioning as the outputsignal of the norm. All the information required by an organisation will be aconsequence of the norms that define that organisation and the interaction of theorganisation and the agents which are its members with other agents in society.

Norms may be considered to be linked in as much as no norm works in isolation . Aswell as the connections between the types of norms the output of one behaviouralnorm may be the input to the conditions of many other norms.

2. Norm construction

Norms may be considered to have six components (von Wright 1963).

1) the character: the effect of the norm, typically, ‘ought to’ for a mandatory norm,‘may’ for a permissive norm and ‘must not’ for a prohibitive norm.2) the content: the activity or action prescribed in the norm

3) the condition: the circumstances or the state of affairs in which the norm should beapplied

4) the authority: the agent who initiates the norm5) the subject: the agent who can apply the norm

page303/10/2002

Norm Recording – an extension of Von WrightSOCTR 02/03

6) the occasion: the location in space or time in which the norm is given.The subject, content and the condition make up the ‘kernel’ of the norm and willappear in a minimal specification, if condition, then subject is content

The content may be an action or the adoption of an attitude, if it is an action then thenorm must include character - must, may or must not, should, shall or should not.The occasion may be included as part of the condition.

In terms of modelling organisations the evaluative and behavioural norms are thosemost likely to require representation. The perceptual, denotative and cognitive normsare no less important but are ‘inherent’ in the agents that make up the organisation theperceptual norms having been learnt since birth and the cognitive norms part of theinformal background to the agents that make up the organisation. The behaviouralnorms do not occur alone but in coordination with the perceptual, denotative,evaluative and cognitive.

Many of the business rules, implicit or explicit, can be modelled as behavioural normsand are the most easily constructed of the norms, having components which are‘visible’ and recordable.

Behavioural norms take the form, using von Wright’s definitions: whenever occasion if condition, then subject is character to content.

Using the nomenclature of Stamper and Liu (1994) which is adopted in this report thenorm can be written as:

whenever some condition exists if some trigger occurs then an agent is deonticoperator to do some action.

In this nomenclature, for a behavioural norm, the ‘character’ will be a deontic

operator which defines the ‘action’ within the norm to be ‘obligatory’, ‘permitted’ or‘prohibited’. These terms may be given more informally as must or should, may orshall and must not or should not.

3. Recording Norms

To develop further details in the model of an organisation, it is necessary to record thenorms which govern the behaviour of the agents making up the organisation. This isdone using the process of Norm Engineering, a method which determines informationabout the norms and produces a ‘norm specification’, a detailed representation of thenorm in natural language.

Norm engineering may be conducted at any point in the life cycle of an organisationbut will most often occur during analysis of the organisation for modelling purposes,for example requirements analysis. Any change to the perceived state of affairs of anorganisation, initiated by an agent, will occur through the enaction of a norm. Norm Engineering may be used in conjunction with requirements analysis and

organisational modelling methods. The technique of Norm Engineering may be usedwith all norms, implicit and explicit, where there are rules for interaction betweenagents or rules for the formulation of processes and applications. The output of thenorm engineering may be used anywhere that rules are specified including the

processes which are the result of the interaction of human agents or artificial agents.page4

03/10/2002

Norm Recording – an extension of Von WrightSOCTR 02/03

The Analysis of Norms was introduced by von Wright (1963, p70). Although normshave been adopted and the structure defined by von Wright has been applied in manyfields, there are few recorded attempts of structured determination of the informationrequired to construct norms. Visser et al. (1997) introduce a method using ‘normframes’ for the modelling of legal knowledge systems. Norm Definition as a methodwas introduced by Stamper as part of the MEASUR approach to modelling

organisations (Stamper 1994) where the method is briefly outlined as consisting ofidentifying the start and finish criteria for particulars of affordances and identifying‘responsible’ agents, the agents who allow the start or finish. Liu introduced the fourstages of Norm Analysis (Liu 2000, p103) which include:

1) Responsibility analysis, the identification of the agent responsible for the‘action’ part of the norm. 2) Proto-norm analysis, which considers the basic structure of the norm: →

and develops a proto-type of the norm to “facilitate the human decisionswithout overlooking any necessary factors or types of information”. 3) Trigger analysis, which considers the actions to be taken in relation to relativeand absolute time. 4) Detailed norm specification in which it was proposed that the norm could be‘fully’ specified in two versions, a natural language and a formal language. The D referred to in stage 2 is the ‘deontic’ condition. The condition may be any stateof affairs that may be recognised.

These four stages are consolidated into a tabulated method by Salter and Liu (2002).In this version of the method the proto-norm analysis becomes ‘information

identification’, instead of a ‘rough and ready’ prototype version of the norm suggestedby Stamper; the information required to carry out the action part of the norm isrecorded. From the three stages of responsibility analysis, proto-norm analysis andtrigger analysis the norm may be given in detailed specification. The informationrecorded by the method does not, however, match the information required for theformation of a norm. Norm Analysis in this form does not capture the ‘initiating’agent or authority in von Wright’s terms, the agent responsible for triggering thenorm. In the case of behavioural norms which are the only norms that, at the time ofwriting (2002), the Norm Analysis template has been used to record, there is no

facility to capture the deontic attitude or character which defines whether the norm is‘optional’ or ‘obligatory’. These aspects of the information required for the norm, theauthority and character are apparently recorded directly into the detailed normspecification by the agent recording the norm. If this is all that is required then whyare the three stages of responsibility, proto-norm and trigger analysis required at all?In this paper the method recorded in Salter and Liu (2002) is extended to include therecording of the agent responsible for initiating the norm, the ‘character’ or deonticattitude of the norm and the action that must be undertaken as part of the norm. NormEngineering, the method developed here, may be used to record the norms which areeither expressed in written documentation, from discussions with domain experts orfrom the observation of current practices.

Norm Engineering may be considered to be made up of five parts, each of whichcorresponds to an aspect of the norm structure outlined in section 2page5

03/10/2002

Norm Recording – an extension of Von WrightSOCTR 02/03

1. Agent details, determines the agents responsible for a) ‘initiating’ the normand b) the action part of the norm. In the case of the ‘action’ agent, thecharacter of the norm, ‘obligatory’ or ‘optional’ will also be recorded.2. Information identification, what information will be required by the agentsto enact the norm.3. Trigger analysis, which elicits pieces of information: a) the event that

‘triggers’ the norm, whether semiological, substantive or temporal, b) the stateof affairs, the conditions that must exist when the norm is triggered and c) thestate of affairs that will exist after the successful execution of the norm.4. Action analysis, the action that must occur, given the pre-conditions andtrigger to achieve the post-conditions.5. Norm specification, a natural language specification of the norm includingwhat action will occur when the norm is triggered.The five parts need not occur in the specific order given, and will often be identifiedconcurrently. The details for each part of the analysis are developed in sections 3.1 to3.5

3.1. Agent details

Norms involve the action of an agent given a certain state of affairs and trigger. Allnorms require, as a minimum, an ‘action’ agent, the subject in von Wright’s

definition. This will be agent responsible for enacting the action prescribed by thenorm. Behavioural norms which have a ‘semiological’ or ‘substantive’ trigger

(detailed in section 2.3) also require an ‘initiating’ agent, von Wright’s authority whoinitiates the norm. This agent will be directly involved in the state of affairs in some‘role’ which is related to the organisation being modelled.

The agent responsible for enacting the action part of the norm may not be the same asthe agent responsible for initiating the norm or be the agent that is affected by theaction of the norm, the change in the state of affairs. For example the norm whichenables a member of a library to borrow more than their allocated number of books isenacted by the librarian on behalf of the library but affects the state of affairs relatingto the member.

whenever a member has borrowed their maximum allocation of items, if themember requests to borrow more items, then the librarian may increase theborrowing allowance of the member.

The agent responsible for the action part of the norm, which would be recorded, is thelibrarian, the affected agent is the member.

There must be only a single agent responsible for the action in a norm; the agent maybe an organisation, group or sub-group. Where it appears that more than one agentmay be responsible for the action part of the same norm, each agent may beconsidered as the ‘action’ agent of a separate norm.

The same situation also occurs in the case of the initiating agent. A single norm musthave only one initiating agent in one role. Where different agents may initiate thenorm, these are recorded as separate norms.

page603/10/2002

Norm Recording – an extension of Von WrightSOCTR 02/03

3.2. Information Identification

This stage of the analysis determines what information is required for making

decisions regarding actions that occur as part of the norm. The information acts as achecklist for the agent when making decisions regarding the actions and the triggerwhich initiates the norm.

For example, any norm involving an item stocked in the library will require the stockidentification number of the item. The information system can be checked to find therecords relating to that stock item to determine if it is a reference work, is reserved oris available for borrowing. Other information may include the member’s identificationnumber which could be used to access information regarding the number of booksalready issued to the member, outstanding fines, number of items which may beborrowed etc.

3.3. Trigger Analysis

Trigger analysis records three pieces of information: a) the pre-conditions, the state ofaffairs existing before the norm is triggered, b) the event that triggers the norm, c) thepost-conditions, the state of affairs that exists after the successful execution of thenorm. If the norm is not successfully executed then the pre-conditions may remain inforce. There will be some form of change, however, which at a minimum will involvea change in the knowledge of the agents involved in and perceiving the action of thenorm. There may be a change to the state of affairs resulting from the unsuccessfulcompletion of the norm, for example, a borrower attempts to extend the ‘borrowing’of a library book but, when producing the book at the library counter, is informed thatthe book has been requested by someone else. The norm to renew the book isunsuccessful and there is a change to the state of affairs in that the member is nolonger a borrower for that book.

3.3.1 Pre-conditions

There is always a pre-condition for the norm, a state of affairs must exist within whichthe norm may be triggered. The pre-conditions may or may not include the existenceof an agent. For example, in the case of a ‘substantive’ trigger for the norm, section3.3.2.2, the pre-condition may be that a telescope is in an uncovered state (the state ofaffairs), the trigger being that an agent perceives that ‘the sun shines directly onto thetelescope’. In this case there is no agent involved in the pre-conditions. Where anagent is involved, this will be the ‘initiating’ agent which is involved in some state ofaffairs and which appears in the form of some ‘role’ in the trigger.

3.3.2 Triggers

The ‘triggers’ may be classified as either semiological, substantive or temporal.Semiological triggers include communicative actions and other events which can berepresented by signals directly communicated between agents. Substantive triggersinclude the results of physical actions. Temporal triggers are those that result from thepassage of time. These can be sub-classified as either ‘relative’, taking place relativeto a previous event occurring at some point in time or as ‘absolute’ events, the resultof the passage of time without relation to a previous event. 3.3.2.1 Semiological triggers

page703/10/2002

Norm Recording – an extension of Von WrightSOCTR 02/03

These events involve the communication of intention between agents, usually in theform of spoken or written acts but may also include physical signals. There is a directtransfer of ‘intention’ between the agents such that the second (the receiving) agentmay query, and clarify the meaning of the communication with the first (the

communicating) agent. The ‘receiving’ agent then selects the relevant norm from theconditions which is enacted by the ‘acting’ agent specified in the norm. Thus, aspresented in figure 1, the initiating agent (A1) communicates directly with a

‘receiving’ agent (A2). These agents communicate until the intention of A1 is clear inthe mind of A2. A2 then ‘acts’ out the norm in the form of the action agent (A2’). Theinitiating agent thus communicates directly with the action agent.

initiatingagentA1communicatingagentcommunication ofsignA2receivingagentenaction ofnormA2’actingagentclarification ifrequiredFigure 1 – the agents involved in a semiological event.

The same communication may be made using one of several different media. For

example, the communication of the requirement to borrow a copy of a book may be inthe form of a verbal request to a librarian, a written application in a form or

electronically via a web page. These may all have the same communicating agent (amember of the library) with the same intention, to request a copy of a book, but thecommunication appears in different semiological forms. The different semiologicalforms all trigger the same norm which begins a process by which a member requeststhe copy of a book, the request is recorded on the information system.3.3.2.2 Substantive triggers

Substantive events are the physical occurrence of actions which lead to the triggeringof norms. These may be in one of two forms involving either a communicating agentor without an agent in the form of a naturally occurring substantive act, for examplethe sun coming out from behind a cloud or lightning striking a building.

In the case of a communicating agent being involved in a substantive trigger, theevents represent a communicative act on the part of the communicating agent (A1)with no link between the communicating agent and the receiving agent (A2) by whichthe receiving agent may clarify the intention of the communicating agent. The

receiving agent perceives that a substantive act has taken place within the context oftheir state of affairs. In the case of this type of event the receiving agent cannot‘clarify’ the intention of the communicating agent, the agents and acts involved areshown in figure 2.

page803/10/2002

Norm Recording – an extension of Von WrightSOCTR 02/03

A1commitssubstantiveactinterpretssubstantiveactA2as receivingagentas initiatingagentenaction ofnormA2’actingagentcommunicatingagentno direct ‘communication’between A1 and A2Figure 2 – the agents involved in a substantive event.

As in the case of a semiological event, the ‘interpreting’ agent is the same as the‘acting’ agent. Thus A2 perceives the trigger event within the context of the state ofaffairs and initiates a norm which it enacts as the acting agent A2’.

For example a communicating agent may place a book in a return box at the library,this is interpreted by the receiving agent (the librarian) as an intention to return thebook which triggers a norm for the acting agent (which may be the same librarian) torecord on the information system that the book is returned and available for‘borrowing’.

The second form of substantive trigger does not involve a ‘communicating’ agent. A‘purely’ substantive event is perceived by an agent within the context of a state ofaffairs and triggers some form of action on the part of that agent. Again, the

perceiving agent (A2) is the same as the initiating agent and is also the acting agent(A2’), figure 3.

A2perceivessubstantiveactinitiatesnorm asinitiatingagentenaction ofnormA2’actingagent‘natural’ substantive actFigure 3 – the agents involved in a substantive event.

For example, an astronomer has placed a telescope outside, if the sun shines brightlyon the reflector of the telescope it may damage the optics. The result is the norm:whenever a telescope is uncovered if the sun shines brightly on the telescope thenthe astronomer must cover the telescope.

Although no agent involved is specified in the state of affairs or trigger, an agent (A2)the perceiving agent is required for the trigger to be perceived and by which the normmay be triggered.

page903/10/2002

Norm Recording – an extension of Von WrightSOCTR 02/03

3.3.2.3 Temporal triggers

Temporal events can trigger norms. Temporal events have two forms ‘relative’ and‘absolute’.

Relative events occur at a point in time determined by a certain period following aprevious event, semiological, substantive or temporal. Relative events are most likelyto be triggered by the information system itself rather than a communicating agent.For example, an item that is ‘borrowed’ will have a ‘due’ date by when it must bereturned to the library. The library information system will trigger certain norms whenthis date is reached, or passed. The temporal event is itself a communication on thepart of the library, with an intention for something to happen at that time.

A2temporaleventas receivingagentas initiatingagentenactionof normA2’actingagentFigure 4 – agents involved in temporal events.

As shown in figure 4, a temporal event is perceived by an agent (A2) who initiates anorm. The same agent will enact the norm as the acting agent (A2’).

Absolute events occur at a particular point in time which is not relative to a previousevent. For example, a calendar event, such as a public holiday may trigger the normthat the library is not open to the public on that day.

Technically speaking, all temporal events are ‘relative’ to some other event. For thepurposes of this report ‘relative’ events will be determined to be relative to previousevents occurring within the context of the information system being modelled,‘absolute’ events will be those with no reference within the information system butrelated to the external factors, such as Greenwich Mean Time and the Julian calendar.3.3.2.4 Norms as triggers

Many of the triggers can be represented as norms themselves. That a borrowed itemmust be returned after 14 days is a norm which itself has an acting agent, informationthat is required and is itself triggered by an event, the borrowing of the item. A decision must be made at some point in the analysis of an organisation as to whatlevel of norms are to be modelled as part of the information system and which may beconsidered to be in the ‘public domain’ and are general knowledge. These ‘publicdomain’ norms are therefore not included as part of the norms for the system but arepart of the ‘informal’ structure of the information system being modelled. 3.3.3 Post-conditions

The post-conditions are the consequence part of the norm, the ‘result’ of the actionpart of the norm, that a certain state of affairs will be arrived at as a consequence ofthe acting agent enacting the action part of the norm. In the case of a semantic

page1003/10/2002

Norm Recording – an extension of Von WrightSOCTR 02/03

analysis model, this will be that a particular of an affordance is started or finished or,if the norm is the trigger for another norm, that the triggered norm will be completedsuccessfully, that its actions are completed.

3.4 Action analysis

Every norm contains an action, something done by the ‘acting’ agent to achieve thestate of affairs specified in the post-condition of the analysis. The action may bewritten ‘informally’ and without detail. Thus ‘the astronomer must cover thetelescope’ states what must be done but not how to do it.

When conducting an analysis to determine norms it may become apparent that severalnorms have the same post-conditions but different responsible agents or triggerevents. The pre-condition (state of affairs) will be the same in all cases, the

‘information required’ may be the same or may vary depending on the responsibleagent. For example, in the case of the semantic analysis of the library, the finish of aparticular of the affordance ‘borrow’ of an item. The acting agent for the norm may bethe borrower or the library/librarian. The information required is the same, the book’sstock identification number and the borrower’s membership number, but there are anumber of different triggers. The library requests return of the item, the borrowerreturns the item before the ‘due date’, the borrower wishes to renew the item, the itemis due back, the item is overdue. The different combinations of authority, the initiatingagent, and trigger lead to a possible five different norms.

3.5 Norm specification

The information collected in the previous stages, represented in the norm informationtable can now be used to generate norm specifications. As detailed in section 2if condition then consequence.

The ‘condition’ part of the norm may be assembled from the information collectedduring the stages of the information identification and trigger analysis and specified inthe pre-conditions.

The consequence will be the result of a combination of ‘action agent’ and action

which, if successfully completed, leads to the achievement of the post-condition. Thisis defined as a successful completion of the norm.

Using the form for behavioural norms developed in section 2whenever condition if statement then agent is character to do action.Condition, is an existing state of affairs, given in the pre-condition.Statement is an event which can be determined from the trigger.Agent comes from the responsibility analysis.

Character associates the ‘action’ with the ‘action’ agent.

Action is what the agent is required to do to achieve the post-conditions.The collected information for the norm may be recorded in a table as in figure 5.

page1103/10/2002

Norm Recording – an extension of Von WrightSOCTR 02/03

normagentdetails

informationrequired

identifier for the norminitiatingagent responsible for initiating norm (only

required for semiological triggers)

actingagent responsible for the action part of the

norm

characterobligatory optional

type of information required for/in the event

The conditions (state of affairs) forinvoking/applying the norm

semiological, substantive or temporal eventspost-The consequence (state of affairs) after

conditionssuccessful execution of the normthe action that occurs to achieve the required post-conditions

whenever state of affairs if trigger then agent ischaracter to do action

pre-conditions

Figure 5 – table for norm engineering

triggers

actiondetailednorm

Thus for the example of changing the state of affairs from that in which is a book isborrowed to that in which the book is no longer borrowed.

The precondition for the norm is the state of affairs in which the book is borrowed: whenever a book is borrowed.

Responsibility for starting (initiating) the norm then lies with two possible authorities: • the borrower, • the library.

The information required to change the state of affairs is the books stock

identification number and the borrowers membership number, if the informationsystem being used is an IT system.Triggers for starting the norm include:

1. The borrower renews the book, communicative trigger (the borrowercommunicates that they wish to renew the book). 2. The borrower returns the book before the ‘due date’, a substantive trigger.3. The library requests return of the book, a communicative trigger.4. The book is due for return, a temporal trigger.5. The book is ‘overdue’, a temporal trigger.

Each set of preconditions leads to a different norm, each of which may be recorded inthe data tables as follow.

page1203/10/2002

Norm Recording – an extension of Von WrightSOCTR 02/03

normagentdetailsinformationrequiredtriggers

borrow finish 1initiatingmemberactingborrower

characterobligatory optionalbook stock id, borrower id.

The book is borrowed

borrower wishes to renew the bookpost-The book is recorded as returned

pre-conditionsconditions

actiondetailednorm

The borrower returns the book to the library

whenever a member has a book borrowed if the borrowerwishes to renew the book then borrower may return thebook

borrow finish 2initiatingborroweractinglibrarian

characterobligatory optionalbook stock id, borrower id.

The book is borrowedborrower returns the bookpost-The book is recorded as returned

pre-conditionsconditions

normagentdetailsinformationrequiredtriggers

actiondetailednorm

The borrower returns the book to the librarywhenever a member has a book borrowed if the borrowerreturns the book then librarian must record the book asreturned

borrow finish 3initiatinglibraryactingborrower

characterobligatory optionalbook stock id, borrower id.

The book is borrowedlibrary demands return of bookpost-The book is recorded as returnedpre-conditionsconditions

normagentdetailsinformationrequiredtriggers

actiondetailednorm

The borrower returns the book to the library

whenever a member has a book borrowed if the librarydemands the return of the book then borrower must returnthe book

page1303/10/2002

Norm Recording – an extension of Von WrightSOCTR 02/03

normagentdetailsinformationrequiredtriggers

borrow finish 4

initiating

borrower

obligatory optionalbook stock id, borrower id, due date

actingcharacter

The book is borrowed

the book is due for return to the librarypost-The book is recorded as returned

pre-conditionsconditions

actiondetailednorm

The borrower returns the book to the library

whenever a member has a book borrowed if the book isdue for return then borrower must return the book

normagentdetailsinformationrequiredtriggers

borrow finish 5

initiating

library

obligatory optionalbook stock id, borrower id, due date

actingcharacter

The book is borrowedthe book is overdue for returnpost-The book is recorded as returned

pre-conditionsconditions

actiondetailednorm

the library takes action against the borrower to get thereturn of the book

whenever a member has a book borrowed if the book isoverdue for return then library may take action against theborrower

The norm ‘borrow finish 3’ is a good example of a situation where the norm istriggered by another norm. The finish norm in this case is triggered by a request forthe return of the book by the library. This norm may have been triggered by anothermember communicating to the library that they wish to borrow the book. If this is amember with a higher priority then the return norm is triggered. The norm templatemight have the following form.

page1403/10/2002

Norm Recording – an extension of Von WrightSOCTR 02/03

normagentdetailsinformationrequired

request bookinitiatingmemberactingmember

characterobligatory optionalbook stock id, member id.

The book is stocked by the library but is‘out’

the member wishes to borrow a book that is not in thelibrarypost-The book is requested by the memberpre-conditionsconditions

triggers

actiondetailednorm

The member places a request for the book

whenever a member wishes to borrow a book if the bookis ‘out’ then member may request the book

These dependent norms will have become apparent during discussions andobservation of the domain being modelled.

4. The Norm recording tool

The norm analysis tool is based on an input form related to the template used forspecifying norms recorded in section 3. The form records an identifier for the norm,this usually identifies the norm in terms of the state of affairs to which it relates. In thecase of semantic analysis this may be the affordance for which the norm may berelated to the start or finish of. The initiating and acting agents are recorded with the‘character’, the key word used to determine the obligatory/optional character of thenorm and the illocutionary force with which it is applied. The pre-conditions andtrigger give the state of affairs and trigger event which relate to the condition part ofthe norm and the action relates directly to the consequence. The norm itself may bebuilt up from the information recorded in the upper part of the form and is indicated inthe lower. The form is shown in figure 6.

The norms modelled using this tool are currently based on the format of behaviouralnorms as these are the norms which are usually modelled when recorded the ‘businessrules’. The tool allows all of the norms in the database to be scanned individually orlisted for ease of checking and selection when the tool is used in conjunction withother techniques, figure 7.

page1503/10/2002

Norm Recording – an extension of Von WrightSOCTR 02/03

Figure 6 – the form used to input norms.

Figure 7 – a ‘list’ of the norms recorded.

The tool applies a syntactic check in that it will not record a norm which is missingthe condition, agent or consequence.

The full norm database may be printed out in the form of a text file which includeseither the full details recorded for the norms or just the norm itself.

page1603/10/2002

Norm Recording – an extension of Von WrightSOCTR 02/03

Norms from C:\\VB5prg\\NormAnalysis\\Ch8Library.nar.2

whenever a person wishes to join the librarythen the librarian

should register the person for membership membership 2

librarian

person details

person exists, library exists

person wishes to become member of library

person allowed membership of library.3

The output is ‘tagged’ which enables the text contained within to be read and used inother applications, including ‘Requisite Pro’, a UML tool for requirements analysis orother text based analysis tools.

5. Conclusion

This report has presented an outline of a norm engineering technique which recordsdetails relating norms, in particular behavioural norms, in a table. Although normshave achieved widespread acceptance and use, the method of identifying andrecording norms, how the information used in norms is recorded seems to havereceived little attention since the work of von Wright (1963). The method of NormEngineering, reported in this paper, is an extension of work introduced by Stamperand Liu (Stamper 1994, Liu 2000).

The details required for the formulation of a norm, captured in the table include:1) Agent details, the agents responsible for initiating the norm (if applicable) andfor the action carried out in the norm.2) Information identification, information required by the agents in order tocarry out the action part of the norm.3) The pre-conditions, the state of affairs which exists and is required whichplace the norm in context, the trigger event and the post-conditions, the stateof affairs which will exist after the norm has been done successfully enacted. 4) The ‘action’, details of the actions that occur to achieve the required post-condition given the pre-condition and trigger.5) The detailed norm structure, a natural language representation of the normwhich may then be used in modelling the organisation.

page1703/10/2002

Norm Recording – an extension of Von WrightSOCTR 02/03

A software tool for recording norms in this format is detailed in section 4. Evaluating and recording norms in this format gives rise to the first indications offields of norms. Where several norms have the same initial state of affairs and finalstate of affairs but different triggers and possibly different agents then these normsmay be associated in a norm field. Only one norm of the field is required to achievethe change in the state of affairs.

References

Castelfranchi, C., Conte, R. & Paolucci, M. (1998), Normative reputation and the

costs of compliance, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation vol. 1, no. 3,, 1(3), .

Conte, R. & Castelfranchi, C. (1995), Cognitive and Social Action, UniversityCollege London Press, London, ISBN 1-85728-186-1.

Filipe, J. B. L. (2000), Normative Organisational Modelling Using Intelligent Multi-Agent Systems, Ph. D. Thesis, Staffordshire University, Stafford

Liu, K. (2000), Semiotics in Information Systems Engineering, Cambridge UniversityPress, Cambridge, ISBN 0521593352.

Neisser, U. (1976), Cognition and Reality - Principals and Implications of CognitivePsychology, W.H. Freeman and Company, San Francisco, ISBN 0-7167-0478-1.Saam, N. J. & Harrer, A. (1999), Simulating Norms, Social Inequality, and FunctionalChange in Artificial Societies, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 2(1) .

Salter, A. & Liu, K., (2002), Using Semantic Analysis and Norm Analysis to ModelOrganisations, In: J. Braz, M. Piattini and J. Filipe (Eds.), ICEIS 2002, Cuidad Real,Spain, 847-850.

Stamper, R. (1994) Social Norms in Requirements Analysis - an Outline of

MEASUR, In: M. Jirotka and J. Goguen (Eds), Requirements Engineering: technicaland social aspects, New York Academic press.

Stamper, R. & Liu, K., (1994), Organisational Dynamics, Social Norms andInformation Norms, Proceedings of Hawaii International Conference on SystemSciences Jan 4-7 1994, Hawaii,

Stamper, R., Liu, K., Hafkamp, M. & Ades, Y. (2000), Understanding the Roles ofSigns and Norms in Organizations - a Semiotic Approach to Information SystemsDesign, Behaviour and Information Technology, 19(1), pp. 15-27.

Visser, P. R. S., Kralingen, R. W. v. & Bench-Capon, T. J. M., (1997), A Method forthe Development of Legal Knowledge Systems, Sixth International Conference onArtificial Intelligence and Law (ICAIL'97), Melbourne, Australia, ACM,

von Wright, G. H. (1963), Norm and Action - A Logical Enquiry, Routledge, London,

page1803/10/2002