Ekaterina Ermilova

Modeling and management of profiles and competencies in VBEs

Virtual organization Breeding Environments (VBEs) are long-term clusters/associations of autonomous and geographically dispersed organizations in the market and society. The VBE aims to prepare its member organizations and enhance their readiness for potential involvement in opportunity-based Virtual Organizations (VOs). Organizing/management of profiles is a key activity in VBEs. The need for management of profiles is even larger in medium-size and large-size VBEs (e.g. with more then 50 members), where typically the member organizations do not have the chance of getting to know all others directly. Furthermore, uniform structuring/modeling of the mostly textual content of profiles enables their processing by the software that supports variety of VBE functionality. An important element of the profiles in VBEs is the competency. There is no consensus on the definition of competency and the existing literature associate it with a range of tangible characteristics such as resources and products, as well as intangible characteristics such as knowledge and motivation. This paper introduces and details a unified/generic model for VBE profiles and VBE competencies. It further addresses the design of an adaptable, replicable and sustainable Profile and Competency Management System (PCMS), which is being developed supported by the ontology for profiles and competencies. An approach and mechanism for semi-automated derivation/discovery of elements for organization’s profile and competency from on-line text corpora is also introduced.

Competency and profiling management in virtual organization breeding environments

A main characteristic of a Virtual organization Breeding Environment (VBE) is the set of competencies that it can offer to the market and society. The VBE competencies are defined in this paper through the competencies of three main VBE information components, such as the VBE member, the Virtual Organization (VO) formed in the VBE, and the VBE itself. Typically competencies appear as a part of the VBE members’ profiles. VO’s competencies need to be obtained through the VOs’ profiles, during the operating stage of the VBE. The competencies of the VBE itself need to be carefully defined at each VBE and are contained in the VBE profile. These three kinds of profiles are addressed in this paper. The management of profiles and competencies within a VBE shall be supported by a special subsystem of the VBE Management System (VMS) - Profiling and Competency Management System (PCMS) specified in this paper.

Modeling and Management of Information Supporting Functional Dimension of Collaborative Networks

Fluent creation of opportunity-based short-term Collaborative Networks (CNs) among organizations or individuals requires the availability of a variety of up-to-date information. A pre-established properly administrated strategic-alliance Collaborative Network (CN) can act as the breeding environment for creation/operation of opportunity-based CNs, and effectively addressing the complexity, dynamism, and scalability of their actors and domains. Administration of these environments however requires effective set of functionalities, founded on top of strong information management. The paper introduces main challenges of CNs and their management of information, and focuses on the Virtual organizations Breeding Environment (VBE), which represents a specific form of strategic-alliances. It then focuses on the needed functionalities for effective administration/management of VBEs, and exemplifies information management challenges for three of their subsystems handling the Ontology, the profiles and competencies, and the rational trust.

The management of ontologies in the VO breeding environments domain

The elements and aspects endogenous to Virtual Organisations Breeding Environments (VBEs) constitute a wide variety of entities, concepts and functionalities that are interrelated and together represent the structural, component, functional and behavioural perspectives of these environments. Nevertheless, VBE elements and aspects need to be modelled in a unified manner and their specification made accessible to both its human actors and its software subsystems that are involved either in supporting the management of the VBE itself or its daily operation, e.g., the creation of Virtual Organisations (VOs). This paper addresses the problem areas of the engineering and management of the VBE domain ontology as supported by the Ontology Discovery and Management System (ODMS), addresses the approaches for specification, construction, decomposition, adaptation/customisation and manipulation of the VBE ontology and introduces an extensive list of generic VBE elements by providing their textual descriptions. Furthermore, due to the complexity of endogenous VBE elements, the ODMS introduces the partitioning of the VBE ontology into a set of sub-ontologies. In addition to knowledge interoperability and reuse, the ODMS also supports the semi-automated discovery/analysis of new ontology elements from online text corpora, assisted by human experts within the VBE.

Competency modelling targeted on boosting configuration of virtual organisations

The modelling of organisations competency has been researched during the last decades. One line of this research has focused on addressing collaborative networks of organisations. Virtual organisations breeding environments (VBEs), as the base for dynamic formation of virtual organisations (VOs), are particularly in need of strong management of their organisations’ competencies. Many large first generation VBEs fail due to their inability to dynamically process and analyse information about their member organisations and particularly processing their members’ competencies needed for dynamic and agile VO configuration. This article introduces the ‘4C-model’ (capabilities + capacities + costs + conspicuities) developed to comprehensively specify competencies of VBE member organisations. As such, the 4C-model directly addresses and promotes efficiency in VO formation, and thus increases organisations’ involvement in potential virtual organisations. The article further addresses the development of an ontology for the competency model.

Systematic Analysis of Information Management Challenges within Long-Term Collaborative Networks

Long-term strategic networks – the so called Virtual organizations Breeding Environments (VBEs) – support their members with formation of virtual organizations (VOs), aimed to address opportunities in market/society. But, both establishment and management of these networks are challenging. On one hand, VBE aims at guiding its member organizations to accumulate/share their abilities and resources and work together as one strong virtual company. On the other hand, attempts to aggregate their competencies and resources to both identify what they can jointly achieve and to represent them as a single strong entity in the market/society. These in turn require support for strong interaction and interoperability among VBE members, as well as preserving interdependencies among their variety of information. This paper systematically analyses the base requirements and describes foundational criteria for modeling and management of information in VBEs. Particularly, it justifies the need for development of a generic unified VBE ontology-based system, in response to the identified VBE information management challenges. Finally, it specifies the main research problem areas and questions. Forthcoming publications will focus on the next steps of this research and how the raised research questions are addressed by our designed mechanisms and developed systems.

Collaborative Networks for Biodiversity Domain Organizations

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.