The Computer Simulation of Partnership Formation

This paper is intended to present and apply a formal dependence model to a simulation study of partnership formation. Although the emergence and evolution of coalitions is an issue of major concern in the study of organisations, a number of questions are still laid open. How do coalitions emerge? Which processes and mechanisms are responsible for their evolution? The agents&;#x2018; informal communications, commitments and negotiations are considered as &;#x201C;given&;#x201D;, and none or poor effort is done to ground them upon the agents&;#x2018; self-interests. The philosophy underlying this paper is that the objective relationships of dependence among heterogeneous agents provide a fundamental ground for the emergence of spontaneous coalitions. As long as agents are endowed with different goals and heterogeneous competencies, a structure of social relationships, namely dependence relations, is likely to occur among them. A formal model of dynamic dependence relationships based on the agents&;#x2018; individual properties will be used to derive a further agents&;#x2018; property, namely their negotiation powers. Through computer simulation, this property will be used to predict how likely each agent in a population will form rewarding partnerships.