This book constitutes the proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Principles and Practice in Multi-Agent Systems, PRIMA 2011, held in Wollongong, Australia, in November 2011. The 39 papers presented together with 3 invited talks were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. They focus on practical aspects of multiagent systems and are organised in topical sections on coalitions and teamwork, learning, mechanisms and voting, modeling and simulation, negotiation and coalitions, optimization, sustainability, agent societies and frameworks, argumentation, and applications.

Although workplace design and management are gaining more and more attention from modern organizations, workplace research is still very fragmented and spread across multiple disciplines in academia. There are several books on the market related to workplaces, facility management (FM), and corporate real estate management (CREM) disciplines, but few open up a theoretical and practical discussion across multiple theories from different disciplines. Therefore, workplace researchers are not aware of all the angles from which workplace management and effects of workplace design on employees has been or could be studied. A lot of knowledge is lost between disciplines, and sadly, many insights do not reach workplace managers in practice. Therefore, this new book series is started by associate professor Rianne Appel-Meulenbroek (Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands) and postdoc researcher Vitalija Danivska (Aalto University, Finland) as editors, published by Routledge. It is titled ‘Transdisciplinary Workplace Research and Management’ because it bundles important research insights from different disciplinary fields and shows its relevance for both academic workplace research and workplace management in practice. The books will address the complexity of the transdisciplinary angle necessary to solve ongoing workplace-related issues in practice, such as knowledge worker productivity, office use, and more strategic management. In addition, the editors work towards further collaboration and integration of the necessary disciplines for further development of the workplace field in research and in practice. This book series is relevant for workplace experts both in academia and industry. This second book in the series focuses on the role of workplace management in the organization and the tasks that workplace management needs to consider. The 18 theories that are presented in this book and applied to workplace research discuss management aspects from the organization’s perspective or dive deeper into issues related to people and/or building management. They all emphasize that workplace management is a complex matter that requires more strategic attention in order to add value for various stakeholders. The final chapter of the book describes a first step towards integrating the presented theories into an interdisciplinary framework for developing a grand workplace management theory.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Multi-Agent Systems, PRIMA 2014, held in Gold Coast, QLD, Australia, in December 2014. The conference was co-located with the 13th Pacific RIM International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, PRICAI 2014. The 21 revised full papers presented together with 15 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 77 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on self organization and social networks/crowdsourcing; logic and argumentation; simulation and assurance; interaction and applications; norms, games and social choice; and metrics, optimisation, negotiation and learning.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Multi-Agent Systems, PRIMA 2010, held in Kolkata, India, in November 2010. The 18 full papers presented together with 15 early innovation papers were carefully reviewed and selected from over 63 submissions. They focus on practical aspects of multiagent systems and cover topics such as agent communication, agent cooperation and negotiation, agent reasoning, agent-based simulation, mobile and semantic agents, agent technologies for service computing, agent-based system development, ServAgents workshop, IAHC workshop, and PRACSYS workshop.

Publicly available statistics from government agencies that are credible, relevant, accurate, and timely are essential for policy makers, individuals, households, businesses, academic institutions, and other organizations to make informed decisions. Even more, the effective operation of a democratic system of government depends on the unhindered flow of statistical information to its citizens. In the United States, federal statistical agencies in cabinet departments and independent agencies are the governmental units whose principal function is to compile, analyze, and disseminate information for such statistical purposes as describing population characteristics and trends, planning and monitoring programs, and conducting research and evaluation. The work of these agencies is coordinated by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. Statistical agencies may acquire information not only from surveys or censuses of people and organizations, but also from such sources as government administrative records, private-sector datasets, and Internet sources that are judged of suitable quality and relevance for statistical use. They may conduct analyses, but they do not advocate policies or take partisan positions. Statistical purposes for which they provide information relate to descriptions of groups and exclude any interest in or identification of an individual person, institution, or economic unit. Four principles are fundamental for a federal statistical agency: relevance to policy issues, credibility among data users, trust among data providers, and independence from political and other undue external influence. Principles and Practices for a Federal Statistical Agency: Fifth Edition explains these four principles in detail.

Publicly available statistics from government agencies that are credible, relevant, accurate, and timely are essential for policy makers, individuals, households, businesses, academic institutions, and other organizations to make informed decisions. Even more, the effective operation of a democratic system of government depends on the unhindered flow of statistical information to its citizens. In the United States, federal statistical agencies in cabinet departments and independent agencies are the governmental units whose principal function is to compile, analyze, and disseminate information for such statistical purposes as describing population characteristics and trends, planning and monitoring programs, and conducting research and evaluation. The work of these agencies is coordinated by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. Statistical agencies may acquire information not only from surveys or censuses of people and organizations, but also from such sources as government administrative records, private-sector datasets, and Internet sources that are judged of suitable quality and relevance for statistical use. They may conduct analyses, but they do not advocate policies or take partisan positions. Statistical purposes for which they provide information relate to descriptions of groups and exclude any interest in or identification of an individual person, institution, or economic unit. Four principles are fundamental for a federal statistical agency: relevance to policy issues, credibility among data users, trust among data providers, and independence from political and other undue external influence. Principles and Practices for a Federal Statistical Agency: Sixth Edition presents and comments on these principles as they've been impacted by changes in laws, regulations, and other aspects of the environment of federal statistical agencies over the past 4 years.

This book explores a range of problems in the application of agency law in commercial practice. Moving beyond the limited introductory resources currently available, it "tests" abstract agency law concepts in specific commercial contexts, with reference to jurisdictions around the world. There is an enduring commonality of concepts and principles within agency law, both within the Commonwealth and within the jurisdictions of the United States. The book's comparative approach, drawing together analysis of national and international jurisdictions, provides innovative perspectives and insights, as well as practical guidance on solving commercial problems. The book opens with a detailed introductory chapter which provides a broad overview of the agency issues arising in specific commercial contexts. The subsequent chapters are grouped thematically: company law, financial transactions and services, sale of goods; as well as agency in procedural contexts. Topics covered include the role of the director and directorial board in company law and agency law, agency in shipping law, undisclosed principal in sale of goods cases, regulation of conflicts of interest in securities transactions, poseur-agents and transactional intermediation, the operation of agency in retail financial services, the agent's warranty of authority, and power of attorney. This book is an invaluable resource on both agency theory and commercial practice.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Multi-Agent Systems, PRIMA 2016, held in Phuket, Thailand, in August 22-26, 2016. The 16 revised full papers presented together with two invited papers, 9 short papers and three extended abstracts were carefully reviewed and selected from 50 submissions. The intention of the papers is to showcase research in several domains, ranging from foundations of agent theory and engineering aspects of agent systems, to emerging interdisciplinary areas of agent-based research.