A Formal Framework for Policy-Governed Institutional Agency

Policy is a flexible mechanism to deal with complex coordination and management of organizational elements in an open system environment. A formal specification framework is proposed for such a kind of system called policy-governed institutional agency. The formal framework includes: an abstract architecture, a formal institutional model, and a formal specification language for this type of systems. The concrete syntax and semantics of the formal specification language are given. The core of the framework has been implemented in a prototype environment.