Norms are crucial for studying both human social behaviour and for developing distributed software applications. The term norms is deliberately ambiguous. We study and apply norms in the sense of being normal (conventions, practice), and in the sense of rules and regulations (obligations, permisions).

Normative systems are complex systems in which norms play a crucial role or which need normative concepts in order to describe or specify their behaviour. A normative multi-agent system combines models for normative systems (dealing for example with conventions, or obligations) with models for multi-agent systems (dealing with coordination between individual agents).

Norms have been proposed in multi-agent systems and computer science to deal with issues of coordination, security, electronic commerce, electronic institutions and agent organization. They have been fruitfully applied to develop simulation models for the social sciences. However, due to the lack of a unified theory, many researchers are presently developing their own ad hoc concepts and applications.

The aim of this workshop is to stimulate interdisciplinary research on normative concepts and their application.