How to control emergence of behaviours in a holarchy

An open issue in self-organisation is how to control the emergence of behaviour. This issue is also of interest for engineering holonic multi-agent systems as any level of a holarchy is dependant of the emergent behaviours of its sub-levels. In order to tackle this specific feature of holonic multi-agent systems, the capacity concept which abstracts a know-how from its concrete realisation is introduced. The use of this concept is illustrated in this paper through a case study using the ASPECS development process which enables the analysis., design, implementation and deployment of holonic multi-agent systems and integrates the capacity as a core concept of its underlying metamodel.