IS IT POSSIBLE AND USEFUL TO SUPPORT COMMITMENT REASONING

The concept of commitment has recently been adopted by researchers to model cooperative organizational activities. By defining a commitment as an agreement by an agent to the requesting agent to carry out the r equested action, a Commitment Reasoning Support System (CRSS) is propo sed in an attempt to support the reasoning process in deciding whether or not to make a commitment. CRSS can be characterized as a specializ ed decision support system that emphasizes the accountability and the sentimental aspects of decision making. An empirical study was conduct ed on a CRSS prototype. The findings show that it is useful for commit ment requests with high complexity and/or with important implications. The study also suggests possible conceptual insights of commitment re asoning for future research.