Agent Decision Making for Dynamic Selection of Coordination Mechanisms

In this paper we present a decision making framework to enable agents to dynamically select a coordination mechanism. To demonstrate our approach we introduce an abstract task environment in which agents have to cooperate to achieve their goals. These agents are capable of using two coordination mechanisms, a centralized and a decentralized mechanism. We show how the decision making framework is operationalized in this abstract task environment. Furthermore, in an experiment we compare the performance of two static organizations with an organization in which agents have the ability to switch between coordination mechanisms. Results show that the ability to switch improves performance of the MAS.