Collaboration behavior enhancement in co-development networks

Abstract

The analyzed data gathered from collaborating organizations in Virtual Organizations (VOs) illustrate that most VO failures are caused by organizations' behavior. Consequently, besides understanding and designing well-founded models for organizations' behavior, some mechanisms are needed to monitor and control these behaviors. As a main contribution of the thesis, VO Supervisory Assisting Tool (VOSAT) is developed applying two specific measurements to each VO partner organization: the past collaborative behavior of each partner in the VBE, mostly calculated from its long term behavior monitoring during previous VOs, and current collaborative behavior of the VO partner, calculated through monitoring of each partner's behavior against the defined norms in this VO. Furthermore, VOSAT provides suggestions to support decision making on potential intervention in planned tasks to prevent VO failures and promote collaboration in VOs; thus greatly enhancing the success rate of VOs. For instance, it can support the VO coordinator during its operation phase, with altering the responsible organization for a risky sub-task. A second example of how VOSAT can assist the VO coordinator with enhancing the success rate of VO during its operation phase is through ranking the VO partners' performance and collaborative behavior for the purpose of some reward distribution at the VO. A third example of how VOSAT can facilitate the tasks of the VO coordinator is for selection of most suitable partners during the creation phase of service-oriented VOs. As such, this research develops assisting mechanisms to support VO coordinators with increasing the success rate and resilience of VOs