The Computer Simulation of Partnership Formation

  • Authors:

  • Rosaria Conte;Cristiano Castelfranchi;Vito Veneziano

  • Affiliations:

  • Istituto di Psicologia, Cnr, PSS-Social Simulation Project, V.le Marx 15, 00137 Roma, Italy. rosaria@pscs2.irmkant.rm.cnr.it;Istituto di Psicologia, Cnr, PSS-Social Simulation Project, V.le Marx 15, 00137 Roma, Italy. cris@pscs2.irmkant.rm.cnr.it;Istituto di Psicologia, Cnr, PSS-Social Simulation Project, V.le Marx 15, 00137 Roma, Italy. venez@csr.city.ac.uk

  • Venue:
  • Computational & Mathematical Organization Theory
  • Year:
  • 1998

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Abstract

This paper is intended to present and apply a formaldependence model to a simulation study of partnership formation.Although the emergence and evolution of coalitions is an issueof major concern in the study of organisations, a number ofquestions are still laid open. How do coalitions emerge? Whichprocesses and mechanisms are responsible for their evolution?The agents‘ informal communications, commitments andnegotiations are considered as “given”, and none or poor effortis done to ground them upon the agents‘ self-interests. Thephilosophy underlying this paper is that the objectiverelationships of dependence among heterogeneous agents provide afundamental ground for the emergence of spontaneous coalitions. As long as agents are endowed with different goals andheterogeneous competencies, a structure of social relationships,namely dependence relations, is likely to occur among them. Aformal model of dynamic dependence relationships based on theagents‘ individual properties will be used to derive afurther agents‘ property, namely their negotiation powers.Through computer simulation, this property will be used topredict how likely each agent in a population will formrewarding partnerships.