Principles of Intelligent Organisation

INTRODUCTION
On October 02 and 03, 2012 the School for Information and Knowledge Systems (SIKS) will organize an Advanced Course on Principles of Intelligent Organisation. The two-day event will be given in English and is part of the advanced components stage of the educational program for SIKS PhD-students.

As IT systems grow to include hundreds or thousands of components, organization principles are adopted to design, management and specification of complex computational systems. Furthermore open environments pose new demands on traditional architectures. These demands include the integration of organizational and individual perspectives and the dynamic adaptation of models to organizational and environmental changes. Organizational design plays a critical role in the development of larger and more complex (information) systems.

In many domains, such as e-government, city / transport planning, sustainable energy, secure trade lanes, serious games and training and crises management, the interaction between people and technology is fast evolving towards a type of teamwork where people and technology are ‘equal’ partners, each with their own capabilities and objectives and both contributing equally to results. The behavior of these socio-technical teams is both emergent and designed. It is non-monotonic, non-linear and subject to the adaptive capabilities of the actors active in it. Governance models for such systems must combine reflexive and predictive capabilities to respond and adapt to changing circumstances as means for understanding the dynamics and processes of change found in complex environments. More than the understanding of emergent behavior, analysis and design of complex adaptive systems requires models that mediate between global aims and institutional control, and the individual autonomy of actors.

On the other hand, human organizations can be seen as a set of entities regulated by rules and mechanisms of social order and created by more or less autonomous actors to achieve common goals. Organization supports an individual (be it a person, a computer system, or an institution) to recognize its role, and the roles of others, in accomplishing those collective goals, with communication as a key means. Organizational Theory sees organizations as instruments of purpose, as they are seen as coordinated by intentions and goals. Agent models are therefore increasingly used to model, simulate and support human organizations.

In this advanced SIKS course, we will discuss these two perspectives and present different approaches to the study of organizations both from the perspective of social science and management sciences, as from the perspective of information science and artificial intelligence. Speakers will cover a wide range of topics, and we will have an hands-on session on the design of organization models.

DATE:October 02 & October 03, 2012

LOCATION: Conference Center De Poort , Groesbeek

SCIENTIFIC DIRECTORS:
Dr. Virginia Dignum (TUD)
Dr. Stijn Hoppenbrouwers (RUN)

PROGRAM: The final program is now available

REGISTRATION
At this course there is a limited number of places and there is interest from other groups in the topic as well. Therefore, an early registration is required.

Deadline for registration for SIKS-Ph.D.-students: September 28 2012

After that date, applications to participate will be honoured in a first-come first-serve manner. Of course, applications to participate from other interested groups are welcome already. They will receive a notification whether they can participate as soon as possible.

For registration you are kindly requested to fill in the registration form

Arrangement 1 includes single room, all meals, and course material. Arrangement 2 includes two lunches, one dinner and course material. So no stay in the hotel and no breakfast.

Arrangement 1 only applies to fully registered SIKS-PhD-students and SIKS-research fellows. Other participants should make their own sleeping arrangements.