Collaborative Networks for a Sustainable World

There is a great potential for mutual beneficial synergies between the two fields of Collaborative Networks and Sustainability science. This potential has in fact been recognized in many fields where these synergies are leading to novel approaches and solutions. It is particularly evident that the challenges of sustainability call for a wide collaboration among multiple stakeholders, as the needed changes exceed the capacity and capability of individual actors. With the purpose to illustrate the possible contribution and challenges for collaborative networks in sustainability, a number of relevant cases where examples of such synergies are already identified are briefly introduced.

Environmental responsibility is evolving into a crucial aspect of strategic management as regulations are expected to tighten significantly in the near future following the need to mitigate the effects of climate change. Many businesses react to this challenge by implementing environmental reporting and management systems. However, often the environmental programme is not properly integrated in the overall business strategy and the management does not have timely access to appropriate environmental information. Moreover, within collaborative networks (CNs) the environmental management (EM) effort should be coordinated amid partners to achieve a much needed synergy and also enable prompt deployment of the required EM artefacts within the virtual organisations (VOs) created. This paper attempts to show a possible way to integrate environmental management (EM) into the VOs set up by the CN participants by using an Enterprise Architecture (EA) life cycle-based approach.

The Industrial Ecology (IE) is a new interdisciplinary field focused on sustainable development. IE aims to the shifting of industrial processes from open-loop systems where different resources move through a system to become wastes to a closed-loop system where wastes become inputs for new processes. This paper introduces a Green Virtual Enterprise (GVE) model as an emerging sustainable manufacturing and logistics mode focused on offering, delivering and recovering green products to/from the market, under a lifecycle thinking and supported by its source network. GVEs creation is considered within a GVE breeding environment context, which acts as a long-term collaborative network aimed at offering the conditions to efficiently promote the sharing and recycling of resources such as: information, materials, water, energy and/or infrastructure with the intention of increasing economic gains and achieving sustainable development.

European scientific research and development organizations, operating in the domains of biology, ecology, and biodiversity, strongly need to cooperate/collaborate with other centers. Unavailability of interoperation infrastructure as well as the needed collaboration environment among research organizations restricts their exchange of research results and efficient launching of co-working/co-development R&D initiatives. This paper proposes the pre-establishment of a long term strategic Collaborative Network called BTCN (Breeding environment for Temporary Collaborative Networks) for these organizations based on a survey of this environment. BTCN supports in a cost/time effective manner the formation and creation of potential future collaboration sub-networks addressing different R&D opportunities.

The application of the collaborative networks paradigm, and a new generation of collaboration-support platforms and tools, is a promising approach to supporting active ageing, and facilitating better use of the talents and potential of retired or retiring senior professionals. As such, collaborative networks can contribute to demographic sustainability. This paper introduces the results of a roadmapping initiative addressing the implementation of a new vision for extending professional active life. To support this vision, a strategic research plan for the development of a new digital ecosystem, covering the social, organizational, and technological perspectives, is proposed. A large number of stakeholders coming from different backgrounds contributed to the design and validation of this roadmap.

In order to enhance the active life of senior professionals, one fundamental challenge is to identify ways to assist promoting the role of elder people within the continuously ageing European society. This paper proposes a vision for establishing required support environment for communities of active senior professionals, and provision of fundamental ICT tools for senior professionals to continue delivering professional services to the society, but in a balanced manner and not as regular workers. For smooth establishment and operation of such communities, a well conceived vision must be established to guide this process towards achieving its desired goals. This paper presents the vision statement developed in the EC funded ePAL project for enhancing the active life of senior professionals in Europe, as well as its instantiation into three orthogonal perspectives of technological, societal, and organizational.

High-technology SMEs have shown their capacity for creating and developing innovative services. Reduced size often confines them to vertical applications and limits possibilities for broader development. Network strategies are possible but may need a strong leader to ensure credibility. On the other hand, large operators cannot be proficient in all the necessary domains, particularly when applications move very fast. Therefore they very much need the diversity and the dynamics of SMEs to provide service packages within a global infrastructure. Bringing together different SME actors behind a telecom provider is a challenge displaying good promises if the links between the different services are correctly identified and modelled.

Distributed systems are growing increasingly complex in the sense that they need to reorganize on a regular basis to respond to external opportunities. At the same time research has shown that performance is improved where technology support is aligned to people’s activities within the system. This paper provides a framework for ensuring that such alignment is maintained during system evolution. The paper first defines the nature of change using complexity theory as the foundation for defining the nature of change. It then builds on the idea of socio-technical gaps to identify the gaps created by a change. The changes are then outlined in terms of perspectives to provide a systematic basis for managing change. To do this change is expressed in terms of the perspectives to provide a meaningful way to respond to change.

The paper reviews mobile government (m-Government) adoption and diffusion factors in developed and developing economies. m-Government is viewed as a class of e-Government applications and refers to any transaction via mobile technologies, such as laptops, phones or personal digital assistants (PDAs). The most significant features of mobile technology include mobility and portability. The ubiquitous dimension of mobile technologies provides means of accessing services anywhere, anytime, and on the move, thanks to advanced wireless interface technologies. The paper examines the literature base in respect of known obstacles to the adoption and diffusion of m-Government, drawing the distinction between technical and non-technical barriers. Furthermore, the paper discusses the economic impacts achieved by e-Government in many countries following the transfer of public services to electronic services; some examples are given from the developed and developing countries.

Effective innovation is the key challenge for European manufacturing enterprises in the global market. New approaches such as Open Innovation combined with the Extended Product paradigm are currently heavily under discussion among practitioners as well as scientists. This paper provides a discussion of the processes and challenges in the early phase of innovation, i.e. the idea seeding, ideation and evaluation phases which take place before formally structured processes like stage-gate approaches are applied. Special attention is paid to learning and knowledge creation aspects. Additionally, aspects concerning further research directions are discussed.

It seems clear that innovation is a key factor in increasing competitiveness of European enterprises in a global market with new players from developing countries. It also seems clear that innovation in organizations must necessarily be based on an open concept that allows them to take advantage of ideas, competences and external resources, hence the concept of Collaborative Networks. Among the different types of innovation that are likely to be addressed within the concept of collaboration it is worth emphasizing what is known as Business Model Innovation. This kind of innovation aims to analyze and assess the logic of the business and establish new requirements for improving it, or changing it. This paper, based on several empirical research studies developed by the authors, describes the role that Collaborative Networks can play in the Business Model Innovation process.

In today’s globalized economy, innovations become more and more crucial for the success of enterprises on the global markets. This article presents a reference architecture for an intermediary platform - and surrounding ecosystem - supporting the Open Innovation process in a network of SMEs and related stakeholders. Its main aim is to foster stakeholder dialogue in networked innovation management, but it also offers technical measures for data acquisition. We demonstrate business viability of the platform based on an analysis of involved stakeholders and their requirements.

Rendering the supply chain more eco-friendly is an innovative idea progressively adopted by industry. Consequently, our research focuses on the CO2 emissions along the supply chain due to freight energy use and storage. A supply chain approach by using a discrete event model was developed. Our proposed tool is able to model Re Order Point production management policy (ROP) and the main demand response strategy Make To Stock (MTS). In addition, the Overall Equipment Effectiveness indicator (OEE), the location of the firms and their types of products are modeled. This method is applied to mechanical and textile industries. The principle objectives of the study are twofold: develop a supply chain simulation benchmark and conduct pertinent experiments to improve green supply chain.

Classic methodologies for carbon footprint are made for conventional companies or territories. None is well adapted for entire sectors or parts of sectors, which usually contain numerous and very different companies, such in the forestry. In this work, we proposed a methodology to count GHG emissions for forestry in a region, from harvest preparation to the entrance of industries. We divided forestry in three steps: harvesting, forwarding and transport, for which we listed each GHG emitting process. Then, we applied this methodology in the Auvergne region (FR) and estimated GHG emissions to bring one cubic meter of wood to the industry to an average of 4.7 kgCe; with each step (harvesting, forwarding and transport) causing around a third of it. We also estimated related emissions for different types of wood (timber, industrial wood and fuelwood) and finally, we proposed 32 recommendations to reduce GHG emissions in forestry.

Sustainability has become a central corporate concern as well as a key factor of success in terms of both image and productivity. In turn, the procurement function is crucial to the definition and implementation of a sustainability policy. It drives a company’s sourcing activities and connects its other functions (i.e. internal customers) to external suppliers and providers. IS, which have come under heavy criticism due to their negative environmental effects, can provide support services while also stimulating and disseminating sustainable purchase policies. The present study combines a literature review with a qualitative study to illustrate this emergence and show how IS can and will contribute to the development of corporate sustainable procurement policies. Using an exploratory approach and constructivist positioning, a “business forecasting” method is implemented to suggest a possible future for sustainable procurement management, along with a new role for IS. Towards this end, a scenario is co-constructed by 12 procurement function experts responding to questions about their customs and practices and talking about their experiences, the effects of the rising wave of environmentalism, the problems they face in implementing and optimizing IS and their professional. They also offer a few predictions and suggest new methods and modes of coordination. Procurement functions and IS departments work together to reduce the environmental footprint of technology and to exert greater influence on collaboration and teamwork by building an economic environment that is more viable and livable and also fairer.

Sustainability requires the engagement of every single constituent of the “building” product supply chain, from concept design to operation. The research explores ways of creating circles of impacts that bind building professionals, energy administrations, and citizens in a shared low carbon experience through a “one-stop-shop” Sustainable Construction Service Platform. The paper discusses awareness raising, stakeholders’ engagement, technical requirements, and adoption and diffusion factors related to the platform. The research identifies the need to use advanced knowledge management functionality to leverage the value dimension of the proposed “one-stop-shop” service platform initiative.

Improved responsiveness to natural and man-made disasters is critical to saving lives and alleviating the suffering caused by such disasters. Emphasis on the design of the relief chain to reduce delivery time of relief inventory improves responsiveness. This is the essence of inventory pre-positioning (IPP). IPP is yet to be clearly defined; and the main factors affecting IPP decision-making need to be further discussed in the humanitarian literature. Quantitative factors such as costs usually take precedence over qualitative factors such as collaboration, infrastructure and others that can substantially impact IPP decisions. This can lead to ineffective decision-making in humanitarian organizations. This paper provides a definition of IPP by reviewing relevant literatures; and a conceptual framework of the main factors affecting IPP decision-making specific to the humanitarian sector, developed through desk reviews and observations.

There is no relief operation similar to another. Nature, number and incentives of stakeholders vary tremendously from one operation to another, and so do the collaboration modes. One thing is always true thought: for each disaster, collaboration networks are implemented on both global and local levels. Yet, lack of collaboration is often underlined as a major weakness of humanitarians. Practitioners have therefore recently focused on this issue in order to find improvement paths. This paper, using a review of existing academic literature as well as reports published by practitioners, illustrates how collaborative networks are designed in the humanitarian sector. A panorama of existing collaboration networks during and in-between relief operations is presented. Barriers and enablers to implement them are made explicit. Two frameworks are finally proposed to better understand collaboration modes at a local level on one hand, and collaboration protocols at a global level on the other hand.

Through a case study of locating shared stockpiles at the United Nations Water Sanitation and Health (WASH) cluster, we contribute to literature by characterizing the real overriding complexities that impact location of shared humanitarian stockpiles. We find that unique complexities related to 1) demand patterns/projections, 2) charter and commercial transport rate structures and uncertainties, 3) interagency supply and dispatch networks, 4) how programs and donors define service requirements and provide direction, and 5) in-kind service donations, all come into play and materially affect the analysis. We recommend that further research be done in these areas.

In a crisis situation, several heterogeneous actors have to work together in a hurry to solve or at least reduce the crisis. Their coordination and the transfer of information between them in such context are a crucial point. Unfortunately, lacks of coordination and collaboration have often been underlined as a major weakness of humanitarian crisis response. To help the whole of actors to work together, The ISyCri project aims to provide an information system. This system must be in charge of (i) information exchange, (ii) services sharing and (iii) behavior orchestration. Nevertheless, a crisis is by definition an evolutionary phenomenon. So a panel control is presented to help to detect when it is necessary to change the system because of the evolution of the situation. This paper aims to present, through an example, the approach of system creation and the control panel.

Research on performance measurement in humanitarian supply chains is scant. Experiences with developing performance measures in commercial environments show that it is particularly important to understand linkages between higher level goals and performance measurement, for example through using strategy maps in for-profit organisations or mission maps in non-profit organisations. In this article, we use literature and four mini-case studies in humanitarian organisations to develop a reference mission map for a humanitarian supply chain. This reference mission map may be used by humanitarian organisations to develop an organisation specific mission map for their supply chain.

During a crisis, the main goal for decision-makers consists in restoring a stabilized nominal mode. The stakeholders have to face an important pressure and drastic constraints of response time and coordination. This study proposes a method assisting these stakeholders in their choices while carrying out a performance evaluation of the activities run during the crisis response process. Currently, in crises, the performance evaluation is only used subsequently due to difficulties in gathering and aggregating information into trustable performance indicators. The interest of this paper is to present this method which permits to obtain a relevant decision support system. Decision-makers will use it to resolve the crisis based on performance assessment. A case study about crisis management within the French Red Cross non-governmental organization is developed in order to explain how performance indicators can on the one hand support crisis response management and on the other hand improve the collaboration of stakeholders.

This paper contributes with the general problem of how transforming classical industry clusters in Virtual Organization Breeding Environments (VBEs). Having into account reference frameworks and models, a structured approach for implementing VBEs has been proposed and its preliminary results are presented here. This approach has been preliminarily tested in a cluster of moulds and dies industries from Brazil where the main VBE’s characteristics have been found. In the future, it is intended to use this structured approach as a concrete mean to systematize the implementation of any type of VBE.

Current market dynamics require European SME’s to focus on complex products manufacturing and to build non-hierarchical business networks, to assure competitiveness and sustainability. Such trend demands appropriate methods for network formation and management, including reference collaboration processes and supporting ICT tools. This paper presents a framework to support SME’s in the creation and management of non-hierarchical networks designed and developed within the European RTD project Net-Challenge. This framework includes methodologies, processes and ICT decision support tools aiming at the efficient creation and management of these networks assuring quick response times and competitive and differentiated offerings.

The globalization of supply and demand has resulted in increasingly complex supply chain interaction strategies across different industries. Since the different interaction strategies are associated with different types of interdependence between partners, the impact of these strategies on cost information visibility across a supply chain network merits further investigation. The importance of cost information visibility lies in the fact that a firm’s internal costs can often depend on the business processes of other members within their network. The paper uses a multi-theoretical perspective to develop an integrative model of the impact of the different dimensions of interaction strategies on cost information visibility and profitability in supply chain networks.

We examine the nature of Collaborative Networked Organizations in Government (CNO-G) and identify three core capabilities characterising such organizations - Partnership, Coordination and Integration. By considering these capabilities as idioms for the CNO-G domain, we define a conceptual model that expresses such capabilities using modeling abstractions provided by ARCON (A Reference Model for Collaborative Networks). Finally, we illustrate the resulting domain-specific modelling framework through the example of a concrete CNO-G aimed at delivering a seamless public service.

Dependent people (especially the elderly) are nowadays surrounded by various health services, as well as by social and multi-technology monitoring devices. The PASPORD research project focuses on improving the management of processes involved in home care. These processes are known to be collaborative: their activities spread over different organizations, are carried out by diverse health or logistical actors. These activities must be coordinated by an integrated system, which is the purpose of the present project. However, the deployment of such a process takes place in a very dynamic and uncertain environment. In this paper, we seek to characterize and model this complex process. On the basis of its features, we define the principles of a system architecture to support the collaboration between the stakeholders and provide agility to overcome difficulties induced by its specificity.

This paper deals with a system of chemotherapy at home which is managed by a Home Care Services (HCS) structure. The main role of this HCS structure is to coordinate care actors for a smooth organization of chemotherapy at home. In this work, we model a real system of chemotherapy at home managed by a HCS structure, and simulate its behaviour. The objective is to evaluate the relevance of such a system for current activities of the HCS structure, and to propose solutions for improving the optimal coordination of the care network for chemotherapy at home.

Nowadays, lots of healthcare establishments decide to integrate a hospital bed management department, while taking into account the financial impact on the budget, the disruptions and factors influencing the bed planning as e.g. the type of care units management and the existing networks between hospitals and satellite structures. Lots of constraints will also have an impact while optimizing the available resources: accepting the emergency case and therefore delaying the planned patient, adding additional beds within a care unit and studying at the same time the collateral costs, opening or closing beds related to a specialty, etc.

Health care systems are facing new challenges such as the aging population, the increasing amount of chronicle diseases and the rapid development of medical technologies. The increasing of the related health care costs lead to the limits of affordability of health care systems. Building Health networks and standardization of clinical processes are the main trend facing these challenges. Actually, the main instrument for documentation and managing of clinical processes are Clinical Pathways (CPs). They allow to transfer evident knowledge in practice and they are the central point of clinical quality management. In contrast, Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPGs) aggregate the evident medical knowledge in a compact form to support physicians in their practice. In the paper analyze the model-driven development of CP for a health network. Therefore, we work out problems of integration. Finally, the paper shows aspect for a model-based integration of CPGs in CPs. These findings are proofed with the help of the documentation of the regional stroke-network called SOS-NET.

Frameworks to support Internet-based virtual enterprises are currently characterised as having fixed process models, fixed meta-data models and a fixed set of users at project inception. This paper proposes the SoBeNet architecture to support a highly dynamic, self-organised, Internet-based approach based on social interaction. The architecture is based on a multi-agent approach, Internet communication being achieved through RSS feeds. RSS conveys state changes by carrying data defined in a common ontology. Each agent assesses state changes using a virtual sensor by calculating the semantic distance between the change and its own interests. Each agent also contains a behaviour network which uses an activation spreading paradigm to react to a combination of its own goals and state changes. The SoBeNet test-bed is based on the Java JADE environment.

The structure and operation of supply networks have received considerable attention from both the business community and academic researchers in the last two decades as the pace of globalisation has accelerated. Supply networks in the international clothing industry have developed and evolved significantly over that period. This paper reviews different ways to categorise supply networks and notes their limitations in providing insights on the structure and operation of networks in the contemporary global clothing industry. Leading retailers and major clothing brand owners influence strongly how such networks operate. Given the limitations of existing generic classifications, a new classification of clothing supply networks is presented based on extensive empirical evidence from the Sri Lankan clothing industry. The relevance of the findings for network design and management are noted. This study of supply networks in the international clothing industry provides much potential for further research, particularly in globally dispersed industries.

This short extract is part of a wider study into the use of the web for research into the presence and structure of industrial clusters and is concerned here with the discernment of networks of firms and the presence of commonalities of competence amongst firms within the identified networks.

The research shows that the information that can be extracted using web based methods is sufficiently informative to gain a wide and detailed picture of industrial activity in the locale under study. In addition to finding evidence of industry clusters and networking activity hidden by company list based investigations the methodology developed has shown that for the region studied, we are looking not so much at the clustering of artefacts

per se

but the clustering of ‘competencies’ in a wide range of sectors that share both common antecedents and current practice in engineering skills for the design and manufacture of large structures that operate in difficult or even hostile environments.

Nowadays collaboration among organizations in the so called Virtual Organizations (VOs) is the most advanced form to make business. Their emergence and growing are closely related to integrated information and communication technology (ICT). One of the promising approaches to carry out the agility and flexibility in VO creation is defined under the assumption of a VO Breeding Environment (VBE). To support such agile organizations, an efficient IT system and methodologies should be set in order to facilitate their daily management activities. Service-oriented software technologies provide promising means to regulate and enforce coordination of cross-organisational business services interactions but lack organizational abstractions and methodology. This paper proposes a framework for collaborative network coordination in the VBEs’s context. The proposed framework satisfies flexibility and agility requirements of virtual organization using a multi layer approach combining VBE management systems layer that assist flexible VO creation, a semantic interoperability layer essential for promoting integration on the basis of common language that describe VO concepts and inherent dependencies, and a service oriented layer that introduces the concept of service domain that encapsulates business processes fitting VO requirements.

The paper considers the complex behavior of a small company in a business ecosystem, time by time leader or supplier or both in one or more supply chains, and points out the data exchange and processing problems it must face for reacting fast to customer requests. Then the paper suggests that in order to meet these requirements it is convenient to provide every company with proper automatic functions, covering its distributed planning, resource scheduling and exception handling needs, whose policies can be fully customised by the company itself to mirror its specific intentions: in short, a practical implementation of the autonomic model.

Supplier selection is an important decision-making process within supply chain management that involves qualitative and quantitative factors. This process is even more complex if different partners that are already collaborating desire to choose a partner for enhancing the sustainability of their collaborative network. Sustainability literature supports the need to consider three main types of sustainability factors: environmental, social, and economic factors. In addition, the management of collaborative networks is better done using a performance management framework/system that allows managing performance under various performance perspectives or dimensions in a structured manner. This paper proposes a novel approach to select suppliers for sustainable collaborative networks using a performance management framework. With this approach, enterprises that are collaborating (or desire to do it) will have a tool to select suppliers aligned with their strategy and the sustainability of their collaborative network, and therefore, improving the supplier selection process and their competitiveness.

The considerable benefits brought up by strategic alliances and diverse types of long term Collaborative Networked Organizations (CNOs) are nowadays widely recognized. There is an increasing demand in the industrial world for concretely implement new forms of collaborations. For example, demand often comes from pre-existent form of clusters or local productive arrangements, that want to evolve to more efficient forms of collaboration, or from small and medium enterprises that are facing a crisis, and look at collaboration with other enterprises as almost the last chance to survive. In general, variety of motivations in collaborating implies variety of missions of potential collaborations, that in turn requires the choice of an appropriate form of Collaborative Network aligned to the mission statement. This paper addresses the problem to define a methodology for analyzing potential pool of partners and for identifing the mission, the form, the governance structure and the value drivers of long term strategic alliance that would bring highest benefits to the partners. Three different forms of CNOs are considered: the Virtual organizations Breeding Environment (VBE), the Virtual Development Office (VDO) and the T-Holding.

Child abuse is a serious problem in our society. In order to provide an adequate response, all the entities involved in its prevention, detection and intervention should work in collaborative networks. In this sense, our labor aims at facilitating the creation of DVOs adapted to the different abuse situations. To that end, we are working to define both a VBE in the Castilla y Leon region (Spain) and a multi-agent expert system able to facilitate the selection of partners.

In Service-Oriented Virtual Organization Breeding Environments (SOVOBEs), services performed by people, organizations and information systems are composed in potentially complex business processes performed by a set of partners. In a SOVOBE, the success of a virtual organization depends largely on the partner and service selection process, which determines the composition of services performed by the VO partners. In this paper requirements for a partner and service selection method for SOVOBEs are defined and a novel

M

ulti-

A

spect

P

artner and

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ervice

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election method,

MAPSS

, is presented. The MAPSS method allows a VO planner to select appropriate services and partners based on their competences and their relations with other services/partners. The MAPSS method relies on a genetic algorithm to select the most appropriate set of partners and services.

Product design projects involve multiple team members with various knowledge and competencies that have to evolve with time, due to rapid organizational, technological and marketing changes. Project managers require management methods to optimize the assignment of tasks to human resources according to their competency levels and the need for competency evolution. In this paper, we tackle this optimization problem in the context of multiple design projects and multiple periods. The model we propose seeks to minimize two function objectives: (i) minimize the supplementary salary cost due to the extended task duration when using under-competent employees and (ii) minimize the financial penalties when the competency goals have not been reached. This problem has been solved by means of a simulated annealing -based optimization algorithm.

Our paper responds to the need of an Aided Virtual Team Building System (Aided VTB System). It focuses on virtual teams that are active in virtual design projects in the area of New Product Development (NPD). An extract of requirements of this Aided VTB System is presented that is based on the idea of Quality Function Development and its tool “house of quality”. The fulfillment of the demand of the requirements by appropriate relevant and recent concepts and techniques as solutions is discussed with help of a sample survey of 34 virtual team leaders. One of the outcomes of the Aided VTB System is to provide recommendations, guidelines and even best practices to take a choice of web 2.0 tools and concepts and techniques in the domain of competence management.

In this paper a novel approach and thinking to foster the derivation of competence and skill requirements by business process models is presented. Management of intra- and inter-organizational business processes is a significant issue that influences a company’s success. A multitude of competence models, standards and frameworks exist. Furthermore, current resource models in business process management solutions are not sophisticated and adequately reflecting the needs of collaborative resource planning and competence management. Our research activities yielded a meta model which tends to overcome existing shortfalls. In this article we present an extensible resource meta-model that allows the modeling of resources including their competences, skills and knowledge. Furthermore we demonstrate the aggregation of competence concepts to business partner profiles in collaborative networks.

Competence management in collaborative networks depends on the identification of gaps between the actual performance and the desired behavior. Therefore, collaborative networks need means to express their goals and intentions as well as to measure this against their own performance. In this paper, we present the i*-based modeling framework for agent-oriented elicitation of dependencies and goal-orientation in collaborative networks. Moreover, we sketch a method to translate the resulting models into a pattern-oriented analysis framework, which allows to compare the models with social network analysis results on real media traces left by the networks while collaborating using social software. This results in the identification of hidden or missing competences within a network. We will illustrate the approach with examples from ongoing project work. Finally, we discuss a collection of collaborative patterns indicating which (meta-)competences can be acquired.

Human Resources Management (HRM) is the strategic management of the employees, who individually and collectively contribute to the achievement of the strategic goals of an organization. Most HRM tasks are based on acquiring the right information and reasoning about skills and competencies of individuals. In this paper we present a formal ontology for competency management and consider three reasoning problems related to HRM, namely, determining the set of skills of an individual, conducting competency gap analysis, and determining whether an individual satisfies a set of requirements.

We present a competence-based collaborative network, the West Midlands Collaborative Commerce Marketplace (WMCCM) that was successfully employed to gain new business opportunities for SMEs in the West Midlands region of the UK. The competence profiling methodology employed places an emphasis on what SMEs are capable of doing rather than what products they make. This generates an increased number and wider range of enquiries to the SME. Further, a combination of tender feeds classified by semantic analysis of the tender requirements matched to the SME capability with a novel partnership formation function generates higher level systems type opportunities for these SMEs, which they would have been unable to undertake on their own. The paper discusses the functionality of the WMCCM using a case study to demonstrate its functionalities with reference to the I-BPM framework from the ECOLEAD project. It also highlights the roles in managing competence exchanges in collaborative networks as well as providing a common infrastructure for businesses to launch and operate their virtual organizations.

In a context of decision-aid to support the identification of collaborative networks, this paper focuses on extracting essential facets of firm competencies. Due to the complexity of the notion of competence, this contribution is based on a semantic representation of information using semantic ontology, bonds and a linguistic treatment based on the utilization of syntactic patterns. To identify enterprise competencies, the UNICOMP system uses company web sites as information source, as well as a general ontology of competencies as semantic resource.

This paper presents the use of a conceptual framework designed for the management of organizational competences to contribute to the evolution of the business model of an enterprise. The framework, developed based on a detailed review of the history of the car manufacturer Toyota, was used for a Delphi study and an action-research applied in the furniture industry. The results suggest that it is applicable for ex-post analysis of organizational changes, as well as a strategy planning tool.

We observe that trust is context sensitive: actors that may trust each other in one situation may not display the same level of trust in other situations, for example when different competencies are required. It is broadly agreed that trust is important in relation to collaborative ventures. In this paper we use the ARCON reference model as a framework to consider endogenous and exogenous aspects of trust important in the establishment, operation and dissolution of collaborative ventures. Some comments are made about the use of the model and some possible shortcomings are noted.

Successful collaboration in business networks calls for well-informed network participants. Members who know about the many aspects of the network are an effective vehicle to promote trust within the network, successfully resolve conflicts, and build a prospering collaboration climate. The importance of well-informed network participants has lead to our concept of network participant informedness which is derived from existing theories and concepts for firm informedness. Through a specialized IT based active information provisioning service it is possible to effectively obtain well informed network participants. A corresponding modeling framework and a rule based approach for the needed active system capabilities are presented.

To fit the globalized economical environment, more and more SMEs have to develop networked and collaborative strategies. Such collaborative networks are mostly based on trusted and well known networks. At the international level, the European Union promotes clearly internet of services based solutions to support innovative business communities of organisations. The results accumulated by various projects provide a consistent environment (including methods, design tools and ESB-based developments) to support, at a technological level, Business Service oriented organizations. Nevertheless, these visions are mostly technology oriented and lack of taking into account industrial characteristics. To overcome this limit, we aim at integrating industrial functional and non functional business and industrial properties (including management strategy, quality, process maturity...) in service registries. This improves service selection and composition to set consistent dynamic collaborative organizations based on trusted business communities of organisations.

The choice of a suitable service provider is an important issue often overlooked in existing architectures. Current systems focus mostly on the service itself, paying little (if at all) attention to the service provider. In the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) registries have been proposed as a way to publish and find information about available services. These registries have been criticized for not being completely trustworthy. In this paper, an enhancement of existing mechanisms for finding services is proposed. The concept of Social Service Broker addressing both service and social requirements is proposed. While UDDI registries still provide information about available services, methods from Social Network Analysis are proposed as a way to evaluate and rank the services proposed by a UDDI registry in social terms.

In this paper we propose a conceptual model for e-procurement solutions for industrial services. Product-related services are of particular interest of companies and should be supported through an appropriate network strategy. However, in the service field, e-business solutions and current standards are still not or only partially considering specifications and related variables of services. We make an approach to develop a conceptual model which allows analyzing existing systems and to specify requirements by distinguishing four system levels. Services can be classified using criteria such as degree of tradeability, intangibility, degree of labor intensity or interaction, etc. In the context of collaborative networks and professional services another common variable is the level of customer contacts or interactions. Services looked at in this paper require close buyer-supplier relationships in nature, and motivate to apply collaborative networks as a strategy, as trust between buyer and seller can be seen as a central focus.

The varying complexity, different maturity and rapid growth of the number of new e-services promote the assessment and their comparison with each other. This paper presents the application of e-service model in assessment and comparison of services in public sector. The model will assist the authorities to evaluate the maturity and complexity of the e-services they provide, and the systems that support these services. It could be helpful in comparing of e-services with other e-services provided by other authorities in the country and/or with other countries. The e-service model is based on the Reference Model for Service Oriented Architecture. A list of evaluation criteria that are based on the model is presented.

The service concept is widely used in distinct research and application areas. Particularly in Collaborative Networks, Service Orientation represents a main trend in the development of support platforms. Nevertheless, a literature review shows that it does not gather a common understanding, namely from the software and business perspectives. This paper proposes a conceptual framework aiming at contributing to make these two perspectives come closer, through a refinement of the Service concept itself and the usage of Pro-Activeness.

This paper presents an engineering approach of product/service oriented value creation chains. When configuring product/service productive networks, a high variability in alternative scenarios have to be considered due to flexibility levers introduced by the service oriented approach. To cope with the difficulty of scenario selection a 2 stages engineering approach is proposed. The first stage is developed in this paper, aiming at a general analysis of alternative scenarios: a network model and an evaluation system for scenario comparison are explained and discussed.

The intelligent transport systems, which aim at providing smarter transport infrastructures and sustainable mobility, are deeply grounded on the Information and Communication Technologies. Current trends in the development of integrated complex systems, such as integrated road/highway concessions management, require new strategies to match business processes to the underlying technology. New road management policies, supported on new user-payer models, and increasing concerns about traffic safety, establish requirements for a new family of emergent business services. Offering the driver the possibility to extend current tolling business service contracts to make possible the access to public transport systems, parking areas, subscription to innovative insurance service, etc., all covered by a single contract, is a promising strategy to promote sustainable and safe mobility. Nevertheless, this new wave of emergent business services requires high interoperability among a diversity of (heterogeneous) technology systems considering both vehicle and road infrastructures. This paper discusses an approach to the required ICT-based intelligent infrastructure based on a collaborative network of stakeholders as contributors to the business service offering.

The ODP enterprise viewpoint focuses on the roles and policies on the enterprise that the system is meant to support. QoS-ODP management is now an important research topic for many universities, institutes and industrial organizations. Several approaches are being used in the field of the formalization of QoS-ODP. The use of formal methods in the design process of ODP systems is explicitly required. In this paper, we explore the benefits provided by using the proof construction approach to define the protocol of negotiating QoS requirements when the enterprise objects perform roles constrained by policies. In this context, we investigate the support for the specification of Quality of Service (QoS) in Event-B when modelling open distributed System in the enterprise viewpoint.

Reference modeling for collaborative networks has been identified as a key topic in consolidating this new scientific discipline. Earlier contributions on this field have provided a solid initial framework and they are considered starting points for this work. Based on two well-known approaches, the CIMOSA and ARCON modeling frameworks, what this work proposes is a set of modeling constructs for CNO modeling under a service-orientation perspective. Service Entities are incorporated as a third approach that may be considered if service ecosystems are being modeled.

The civil construction industry has an operation way similar to virtual organizations, but in not structuralized form, leaving to provide competitive advantages. For in such a way, the paper will propose, through analytical research and case studies and based on EKD (Enterprise Knowledge Development) methodology, the Process Model to support the coordination of collaborative networks in the civil construction sector. This model will analyze each process and information flow contained in the business, that is, describes in a structuralized form the organizational activities, so that promoting better understanding of how the processes could be done to support companies of civil construction sector.

Mashup is a new web 2.0 technology for data aggregation applications, combining data from different sources to create valuable information. The uses of mashups are often more data related than process related. In this paper, we explore the differences between data-oriented mashups and process-oriented enterprise mashups and consider how process mashups can be used for virtual enterprise collaboration. We highlight the modeling of end users’ process mashup applications from both a control flow and a data flow perspective. Based on our analyses, a lightweight process modeling approach is proposed for process enterprise mashup applications. Our approach, illustrated by reference to an example personal collaborative activity, will support collaboration among users with different levels of modeling skills and expertise in a virtual enterprise environment.

This communication addresses the integration of the supplier capacity in the procurement planning process of a customer within a supply chain. Since this supply chain evolves within an uncertain environment, uncertainties may be due to an ill-known demand (prevision) and to the customer production system (scraps, imprecise processing time...). Thus, we propose a collaborative process where the customer aims at taking the less risked decision.The integration of the supplier capacity in the gross requirement enables to assess the risk of back order so that the feasibility of the requirement plan. It then enables the customer to make the decisions which limit this risk.

With the social context of collaborative networks becoming increasingly important, research has broadened the traditional concept of competitiveness to include and emphasize ‘soft’ elements, like social capital. The social capital concept can be attained in two different contexts: intra and inter-groups. The objective of this study is to identify inter-organizational social capital elements and the relationship with collaborative network competitiveness. We intend to provide answers to these questions: (i) what are the elements that explain inter-organizational social capital? (ii) how are these elements related to competitiveness? (iii) what organizational characteristics facilitate social capital formation? A survey was conducted in the enterprises from the Brazilian Wine Industry Cluster. The data were analyzed using factorial analysis and bivariate correlations. The results point out three social capital factors that correspond to the social capital dimensions found in literature: structural, relational and cognitive. The research shows that the correlations among social capital dimensions and competitiveness are strong and significant, specially the structural and relational dimensions. Finally, implications for research and managerial practice were discussed.

Companies that are actively participating in a collaborative network (CN) need to show a high level of cooperation ability and willingness. The concept of cooperation contains various aspects that need to be considered, like e.g. communication, resource exchange, or cross-organisational processes. These aspects should become permanent subjects of analysis during the operational phase of the CN. The article at hand considers one of these aspects, namely the communication aspect. Our approach is based on a combination of fundamental concepts stemming from the Media-Richness-Theory (MRT) and Graph-Theory. It enables the analyser to firstly measure and then evaluate communication intensities in CNs. We present our approach by means of an example and discuss possible application areas and extensions.

Collaborative logistics is increasingly emerging as a new opportunity for cost reduction through internal and cross chains coordination. This paper presents different coordination mechanisms to support collaborative logistics. These mechanisms are differentiated by their planning function, their sharing approach and the information, decision and financial flows. Often, the logistics planning is run first, and secondly, the sharing is set on the basis of the plan. However, recently, new approaches have been proposed where both the logistics plan and the sharing are optimized simultaneously. Constraints on the financial flows also introduce specificities to the coordination mechanisms and these are described and discussed. Finally, the proposed coordination mechanisms are used to describe a series of research and applied projects in which collaborative logistics has been implemented.

The paper underlines the interest of using a performance management system applied to monitor the strategy effectiveness and the interoperation’s performance in the collaborative networks (CN). The aim with this study is to verify if a performance management system helps decision-makers reach the alignment among participants in a collaborative network. It is expected that this work provides an adequate tool for supporting quick decisions to meet the feasible and desirable improvements in inter-organisational processes. A framework (CNPMS) is also presented, having been developed to support the dynamic performance management, which was applied in case studies of two Brazilian collaborative networks.

Today development projects, in particular the development of complex products, are in many cases no task of a single company anymore. They usually require the active involvement of suppliers and sometimes even of customers. Since all involved partners have to invest time and money in the development activities it has to be ensured that the new product generates concrete value for the potential customers so that there is an adequate return on investment. One challenge is to assess the potential value generation in the early development phases when only a few basic specifications are available. This challenge becomes even bigger when contributions of different partners and customers are required. In this paper the assessment of potential value generation is regarded as a collaborative process and it is analyzed which collaboration capabilities are required in this process. The objective of the paper is to suggest an approach for a collaborative assessment of potential value generation in early development phases that considers the requirements upon collaboration capabilities of the different involved partners. In research and development projects this should provide input for the question if the project activities are on the right path to a positive return on investment. The suggested approach was tested in a research project on intelligent cargo solutions with different pilot scenarios.

This paper describes an approach to the design of performance management models in collaborative networks, from a constructivist approach. The general approach is outlined and the part concerning a multi-criteria decision support method is explained. The paper finishes with an illustration of a scenario for test and validation of the method.

Recent widespread deployment of different types of sensors and detectors has opened the door to a new way of understanding collaborative applications. The use of such devices allows information to be collected, used and disclosed on a massive scale and under very different conditions from which we are currently familiar with. Despite the huge potential of these collaborative environments, privacy is one of their most criticized aspects and probably the greatest barrier to their long-term success. To address this problem, we present a privacy-enhancing security model specifically tailored to the characteristics of ubiquitous and heterogeneous environments consisting of low capacity devices. This security model is based on the Kerberos symmetric key protocol which has been modified and extended to avoid using timestamps and to accomplish the authorization process. Finally, we present a validation of our proposal using an automated tool and we show a real world deployment use case.

Collaborative design provides creative design solutions and improves product quality as well as enriches participants’ knowledge. Nevertheless, design and supply chain integration in product development processes is not a trivial task. The complex scenario of the dynamic extended enterprise triggers research toward the development of an innovative co-design platform to support multidisciplinary workgroups. Starting from the definition of a new design process model, the proposed approach is based on the formalization of the distributed knowledge in terms of interaction rules and representational models.

This paper might serve as a guide to take step towards a better acceptance of computer-based Knowledge management (KM) tools in institutional setting. At first time, it investigates a set of factors with different origins which are proved to have an effect on usage decision. Secondly, we set a list of candidate factor which are supposed to influence future users of a collaborative KM platform (Dimocode). At the end, we develop a methodology to take into account the selected factors and master their positive or negative impacts. The contents of this paper would be an appropriate framework in the way of Knowledge management systems (KMS) deployment.

Collaboration Moderator Services (CMS) as an evolution of earlier Moderator research has emerged to address the issues relating to knowledge based collaboration by providing a set of functionalities such as raising awareness of business opportunities, problems areas, conflicts, change in the item of interests and lessons learned from collaboration. This paper presents a framework for learning CMS within the context of SYNERGY project. It has been shown that knowledge miners of CMS can be used to learn from the databases of the collaborative networked organizations (CNO) and semi-automatically update the CMS Knowledge Base. A case study from construction project has been used to show that the knowledge miner of CMS can “learn” by extracting various kinds of knowledge from Post Project Reports (PPRs) using different text mining techniques. The discovered knowledge in the form of rules relates to improving the processes, identifying recurring problems, good and bad practices, improving customer relationships and enhancing the coordination between members of CNO.

In Collaborative Network (CN) environments, creation of

collective understanding

about both the aimed outcome and the procedure for achieving it by its members is the antecedent to any successful co-working and co-development. While a part of the common CN knowledge is pre-existing to its establishment, once the collaboration activities begin the emergent knowledge also needs to be commonly understood within this environment. Creating such commonality in understanding is however quite challenging. This paper suggests a bottom-up approach to reach collective understanding by all individuals involved in these networks, namely by the staff involved at all organizations which participate in the CN. The proposed approach is founded on the idea of

learning-together

by the CN members to reach their collective understanding. In this approach, the domain/application experts in the CN act as the instructors and content providers, and assist with the modeling/remolding of the

education domain for the CN environment

. Considering that the individuals involved in the CN are highly diverse and have different backgrounds, their learning requirements are also highly varied. Aiming to reach common understanding in CNs, this paper first addresses the main challenges in this area of learning; it then presents the related state-of-the-art and proposes a high level architecture for

personalized learning

of the members in collaborative networks.

A business community where communication can be streamlined, information shared and trust can be built can be considered as a collaborative network promoting SMEs long term sustainability by assuring quick response, fast time to market, differentiated offerings and competitive prices. This collaboration could be orchestrated both in hierarchical and non-hierarchical forms depending on the firms size, capacity and objectives. In this research, we have considered non-hierarchical networking among firms, especially for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), where the basic requirements are related with choosing appropriate business partners, building trust and sharing valuable information among them. In order to articulate the concept of this non-hierarchical collaboration, six pilot SMEs were analyzed and a methodological approach to manage these environments is proposed. A generic overview of different variables or factors necessary to build such business collaboration are presented and discussed critically in this study.

Thanks to ICT, new organizational forms are emerging that keep the pace of an increasingly demanding competitive environment. Among them, Virtual Enterprises (VEs) and Virtual Teams (VTs) represent two challenging organizational forms from the point of view of effective management.

An open issue in VEs/VTs is the social and economical sustainability of knowledge sharing in virtual environments, which is often underestimated. We address it from the point of view of “virtual worlds” and developed a prototypal solution that facilitates the cooperative building/sharing of knowledge representation.

In this paper we propose a weighted multi-hypergraph as logical structure to model relationships between researchers and interest groups that join them on the base of shared research topics in a given scientific community. The well known concept of eingenvector centrality for graphs is extended to weighted multi-hypergraphs and we present a model instantiation for centrality analysis in the Pro-VE scientific community.

Internationalization of research is reflected in the distributed nature of research communities. Research has a strong collaborative dimension. It is often carried out by non-collocated individuals and teams in the context of national / international funded programs, institutionally led projects, or simply self-motivated initiatives. Universities form a strong and influential component of these virtual research communities. Advances in information and communication technologies (ICT), including the Internet, have helped sustain these virtual research communities. However, despite the strategic nature of research, there exist various levels of awareness about the security risk factor linked with virtual collaboration. This study examines the security awareness of academics and researchers across higher education institutions with a focus on three different academic settings. The paper suggests that a security awareness program aimed at academics should be initiated across universities to pave the way to security aware research collaborative communities.

The strategic value of Inter-Organizational Information System (IOIS), regarded as an automated information system shared by two or more companies, highly depends on its architecture to support agile business needs. The main requirements of this architecture for supporting business agility are

flexibility

and scalability

,

interoperability and integration

as well as

process-centric architecture and continuous business process improvement

. We claim that the service-oriented architecture (SOA) approach, the latest in a long series of attempts in software engineering, is the best for meeting these requirements. In this paper, after investigating the compatibility of SOA features with IOISs requirements, we propose a service-oriented IOIS architecture composed of business service, application and integration layers.

RFId adoption process is receiving a lot of attention in literature; studies assessing its potentials in supply chains are now well documented. Despite this rising interest, the diffusion pattern of RFId systems in the vertical supply chains has been only scarcely addressed and theoretical contributions explaining dynamics and drivers are still missing. This study shows that the Diffusion of Innovation Theory can be effectively used to explore these questions in a vertical SC. However, three major considerations emerged: 1) the factors influencing, facilitating or inhibiting the adoption process change over time and during the adoption process; 2) facilitators such as business associations play an important role in the supply chains composed of SMEs; 3) the position of adopters within the SC greatly influences the diffusion process.

In this article, we question the way CNs are built around the implementation of RFiD in a supply chain and what are the value creation logics among these CNs. We address three main questions: the way and types of CNs in a RFiD implementation project, the nature of the aggregator and value creation of each actor during the different phases of the project and finally the interconnections between CNs in the value creation logic. We provide answers to theses questions based on a case study that describes the implementation of the RFiD innovative technology in a jewellery supply chain.

Collaborative Networks realization fundamentally relies on the need of

collaboration

among involved partners. From the supporting ICT infrastructures point of view, an increasing movement has been observed in direction of the development of applications based on the Service Oriented Architecture paradigm as a way to maximize reuse, to minimize integration efforts and to augment processes’ adaptability. The underlying motivation of this paper is the possibility of CN members to enlarge their collaboration sharing software services. This means allowing that available services can be accessed by any member so enlarging and reinforcing collaboration while development and hosting costs are decreased. This paper presents an approach, in the form of a reference guide and based on Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model, that helps both CN clients to be more confident when accessing services from CN members, and to CN members to have a support on how their services should be properly developed and made available to CN clients.

Collaborative Networks (CN) realization fundamentally relies on the need of

collaboration

among involved partners. CN members who have SOA-based solutions keep the involved web-services at their local silos. This means that the CN potential in terms collaboration could be enlarged and reinforced if such silos could be opened up and shared among CN members, so decreasing development and hosting costs. This is particularly relevant as CN members are mostly composed of small companies. This paper presents a result of an exploratory research, proposing a model for dynamic service discovery based on Software-as-a-Service business model, which considers not only services’ functional requirements, but also the requested QoS and business processes’ context. A prototype has been developed to show the concepts. A preliminary assessment from the ICT and CN perspectives is given in the end.

Interoperability is the ability of two or more systems or components to exchange information and use the exchanged information without special effort on either system. This paper attempts to propose a framework for evaluating and improving interoperability in each one of partners collaborating in a supply chain. The definition of the framework is based on three important hypotheses. The first hypothesis supposes the existence of interoperation activities which correspond with the part of business processes representing efforts for interoperability. The second one is the definition of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) as aggregation of time, cost and quality performance for interoperation activities and also for actual business activities. The third one proposes to analyze impact of interoperability investments on enterprise objectives in two steps: the first step is the evaluation of the impact of interoperability solutions in KPIs; the second step analyzes the impact of improving KPIs in the achievement of enterprise’s operational, tactical and strategic objectives. A methodology for prior evaluation of interoperability and improvement based on this framework is also proposed. The goal of this methodology is the validation of interoperability solutions to be implemented.

The MISE Project (Mediation Information System Engineering) aims at providing virtual enterprises with a Mediation Information System (MIS) in charge of supporting interoperability in a collaborative network. MISE proposes an overall MIS design method according to a model-driven approach, based on model transformations. This MIS is in charge of (i) information management, (ii) services sharing and (iii) behavior orchestration. Semantic issues are accompanying those objectives: How to deal with information reconciliation? How to ensure the matching between business activities and technical services? How to identify workflow among business process? This article aims first, at defining these semantic gaps along the whole MISE approach. The second part of this article presents how some specific solutions have been found in the specific context of crisis management (French funded project ISyCri). Finally, the current and future works concerning semantic reconciliation (in a generic non « 1 to 1 » context) will be introduced.

Partners in VOs can share large amount of data. Sharing of individual data items is straightforward, but sharing components of complex data structures stored in heterogeneous systems is often a challenge. Sharing is typically governed by rules and policies that need to be translated into access right / privilege control and data granularity control. Simultaneous control of privileges and data granularity across different organizations is a difficult task, and most traditional approaches, such role-based access control can become prohibitively complex in such scenarios. We propose a scheme for concurrent control of subject privileges and object granularity. It includes participants, duties and operations, and generates security labels that describe security features. To facilitate interoperability between heterogeneous systems, the labels also carry information about the data model, including dynamic hierarchy description. The model supports subject activity control over objects with variable data access granularity. It encompasses the advantages of existing role based and label based control. First, an abstract subject privilege control model is built, and the mathematical relationships between privileges in the label system are defined. Second, an abstract object dynamic granularity model is produced and the mathematical relationship between granularity levels is established. At last, a pair-wise privacy label system is provided as an integrated information protection mechanism, where relationships between subject activities and privileges are described for actual access control. A formal verification of the proposed method has also been performed.

To solve interoperability problem from semantic level, we propose to contribute to orchestration of the business processes to implement a mediation based on Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). We show how to take advantage of the forthcoming version of

Business Process Modeling Notation 2.0

(BPMN 2.0) of the

Object Management Group (

OMG) within the framework of a

Services Oriented Architecture (

SOA) development. This new version of BPMN is characterized by the addition of the notion of private/public process, choreography and conversation which are essential components of SOA architecture. We propose a model driven approach using an intermediate BPMN 2.0 model stemming from the high-level Modeling of the business processes defined from the industrial partner’s requirements, to implement the solution on an ESB. The results, within a project whose objective is to allow the

Small and Medium Enterprises

(SME) to benefit from a collaborative interoperable architecture, allows the definition of domain process interfaces.

When trying to solve interoperability problems between enterprises, the semantic issues are important. To date, they are more and more focused on ontology. This paper presents how to use ontology in the PBMEI method, aimed at solving enterprise interoperability problems in modelling environment. During the elaboration of PBMEI, the necessary ontology information is explicitly specified. Because of two different uses of ontologies, this paper proposes two variants of PBMEI. Finally, this paper concludes with the content of the ontologies required in PBMEI. The ontologies in the PBMEI method PBMEI for an application case are being studied.

Looking at collaborative networks of organizations as social-technical systems, information and knowledge sharing implies sharing a set of common conceptual structures across organizations. Through this paper, we describe a case study on how to construct meaningful collective conceptualizations by means of a new approach based on conceptual blending theory.

The Lean Manufacturing strategy aims at developing the enterprise value chain concept. The Lean makes extensive use of new organizational strategies such as business refocusing and development strategies for inter-enterprise collaboration. These reorganizations involve agility to deal with structural changes supported by communication technologies. However, the multiplicity of enterprise IT leads to complicate the inter-enterprise collaboration. However, the Services-Oriented Architecture provides flexibility and openness to enterprise Information System thanks to the “service” notion but fails to deal with business semantic mediation between partners involved in the collaboration. To meet these issues, this paper focuses on a semantic Enterprise Services Bus (ESB) which is a Service-Oriented Architecture middleware to define a business ontology-based matching and provide business and technological alignment to homogenize the information exchanged in the whole collaboration network. This paper also focuses on the technical implementation of the semantic ESB.

We describe an educational game in collaborative logistics. The game is based on an award winning application in cost allocation in forest transportation. The purpose of the game is to get an understanding of negotiation, coalition building and cost/profit sharing when the players have different power and hold different levels of information. The game is played with each player representing a single company. The objective of the game is to find an efficient plan and to share the benefits of the collaboration. We outline the game and discuss experiences from running the game in several countries and with students registered in business schools, engineering and forestry faculties.

In this article, we extend the Goyal and Joshi’s model (2003) of network of collaboration in oligopoly to multi-market situations. We examine the incentive of firms to form links and the architectures of the resulting networks in this setting. We also present some results on efficient networks.

This contribution is to be assigned to the operative production management of collaborative networks. By the application of incentive mechanisms, a competitive and effective management of production processes allows sustainable success. Incentives are relevant for all stages of a network lifecycle. In this paper, the problem is discussed that enterprises from a pool of cooperation-willing enterprises do not take part in a certain value-added process, even though it would be possible from the technical point of view and would also be economically reasonable. As a reason for this behavior, the utility calculus of an enterprise plays a decisive role. To convince these enterprises to collaborate in a value-added process, primarily incentive mechanisms are to be applied. In the following, this topic is taken on and is discussed extensively by means of two concrete examples. In this connection, a concrete calculation model both for the amount of incentives and the profit share is introduced.