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.