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ecially between the initiator agent and the individual agents, a penalty for fewer commitments than what it has promised is the most straightforward incentive and is also easy to be implemented.

The Nature of Virtual Organizations and Their Anticipated Social and Psychological Impact

Abstract

The development of virtual organizations and their agents is a natural continuation of the long movement in western society towards organizing for efficient commerce and communication. All of the technology needed to nurture the rise of virtual organizations is in place, albeit in a primitive form. Virtual organizations are goal-driven associations of intellectual agents working within the information space.

INTRODUCTION

It simply is no longer necessary for people to be in the same physical place to conduct business; in fact, it is often less efficient because the same work can be accomplished without the additional time and expense of travel and facilities overheads. As Negroponte notes, it is easier and more reasonable to move the electronic bytes of information than the physical bits of people and paper on which traditional information once travelled [Saunders and Wellinius, 1994; Negroponte, 1995]. The present paper elaborates on these possibilities, but in a broader sense. Here we discuss the social and psychological impacts of VOs and their agents, we define these terms, and we attempt to dispel any notion that VOs and IAs are too fantastic to be realized in our lifetimes (Huber, 1996). Schools may be our primary focus of interest, but we must understand that the changes schools are experiencing are a redaction of an evolution towards a more machine-dependent information infrastructure that will threaten, or at least substantively change, most of our traditional institutions.

What is a virtual organization?

Every virtual organization will have a dramaturgy, i.e. a series of sequential and parallel actions that are needed to reach a goal. This dramaturgy will be constructed by people at first, but increasingly by the interrelationship among experienced agents and by the heuristics of self-improvement. Thus, the agents will be organized hierarchically. Some agents will call on and direct the activity of others (much like a subroutine is called in a computer program) and some will act alone [Beer, S. (1981)]. The experience of these agents, (i.e. a log of their success in achieving their goals and a mapping of those evaluations onto the strategies attempted, will be used to improve their capabilities. Because this is largely a data management problem, the agents should become fragile at independent self-improvement. This is analogous to the information space as it is now commonly used, simply a conduit for human activity that originates and terminates beyond its boundaries to e-mail between individuals, unless being exchanged, home-pages being accessed. This is analogous to the first intellectual agents operating in the information space. As the analogy unfolds, these beings multiply rapidly and chaos reigns. Eventually two or more, soon many collaborate to accomplish mutually agreed-upon goals. The virtual organization is born.

Fact or fantasy?

At first, there will be no change, because we will see ourselves as the progenitors of virtual organiza