Abstract

Agent-based modelling has recently developed as an important approach to understanding the collective behaviour of individuals interacting, especially in organised and disorganised groups such as organisations, markets or crowds. It has been used as the basis of simulations to explore the dynamics of such systems, and so to predict the implications of deliberate interventions or chance events.
However, agent-based models, which represent in an explicit manner the responses of individual decision-makers to the actions of others, can only be as good as the models of human behaviour upon which they are founded. This paper argues that the theory of dramatic resolution provided by drama theory provides suitable underpinning for this aspect of agent-based modelling and indicates how, through simulation, characteristic patterns of confrontation management could be exposed and assessed.
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Abstract

Two distinct approaches to formally studying conflict are described and compared by applying them to three different phases of an international controversy that arose when a private company was not allowed to export water from Canada. In each phase, the graph model for conflict resolution is employed for obtaining equilibria and strategic insights while confrontation analysis, a procedure for applying drama theory, is used to expose dilemmas faced by the decision makers. The results of the conflict analyses obtained for the three phases indicate that the two techniques complement one another and thereby provide a broader understanding about what occurred and how the dispute evolved over time. A potential resolution to the conflict occurs at a strategically stable outcome when decision makers do not face any dilemmas and their emotions are dissipated.

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Abstract

Game theory assumes that it must be possible for a conflict represented by a game to be satisfactorily resolved without re-defining the game itself. Drama theory asserts that full conflict resolution generally requires players to engage in a rationalemotional process of re-defining both the game and their "positions" in it until there exists a fully satisfactory resolution on which they all agree. In re-defining the game and their positions in it, players must eliminate six “dilemmas”, each of which therefore tends to cause emotions and rationalisations tending toward its elimination.

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