Evolution of a collaborative business ecosystem in response to performance indicators

Abstract

Business Ecosystems supported by the increasing use and expansion of communication networks represent nowadays a powerful form of collaboration, enabling organizations better responding to more challenging business opportunities. In this context, performance indicators are needed for measuring collaboration benefits of a business ecosystem as a whole and of its individual members, the organizations. But such indicators may also induce a self-adjustment of the organizations’ behavior, as there is a natural tendency of individuals and organizations to adapt to the way they are evaluated. As such, an adequate selection of performance indicators can help the sustainability of the ecosystem. The level of reaction to indicators is nevertheless not the same for all members of the ecosystem, i.e. there are different classes of responsiveness. Using system dynamics and multi-agent systems, the focus of this paper is the study of the evolution of the agents of a collaborative business ecosystem, depending on the performance indicators used to assess their performance and considering their class of responsiveness.