Intelligent agent behavior based on organizational image theory

Image theory has been used, in numerous studies, as a basis for understandi ng and describing the decision-making activity of managers in both cooperat ive and competitive environments. The fundamental division of duties prescr ibed by image theory - namely adoption decisions and progress decision - ma ps very well to the adaptability requirements of intelligent agents. The is sues of adaptive planning and execution monitoring in agents an be well ser ved by applying the empirical lessons learned from the application of image theory across groups of decision makers. This paper explores the concepts of adoption and progress decisions in the context of image theory and provi des a basis for creating image-theoretic agents. This paper sets the founda tion for an interdisciplinary bridge between Beach and Mitchell's Image The ory for human decisionmaking,and the construction of intelligent agents. We begin by presenting image theory and describing its use among human decisi on makers. We then show how the mechanisms of image theory can be implement ed in a agent-based architecture to implement both execution monitoring and adaptive planning. This is done through the image-theoretic constructs of progress decisions and adoption decisions. We conclude by presenting logic- programming implementation of the Imaginal Agent Architecture that supports the adaptive planning and execution monitoring of agents through the use o f meta-level constructs for adoption and progress decisions.