Electronic institutions as a framework for agents' negotiation and mutual commitment

Abstract

Electronic transactions are of increasing use due to its openness and continuous availability. The rapid growth of information and communication technologies has helped the expansion of these electronic transactions, however, issues related to security and trust are yet limiting its action space, mainly in what concerns business to business activity. This paper introduces an Electronic Institution framework to help in electronic transactions management making available norms and rules as well as monitoring business participants' behaviour in specific electronic business transactions. Virtual Organisation (VO) life cycle has been used as a complex scenario encompassing electronic transactions and where Electronic Institutions help in both formation and operation phase. A flexible negotiation process that includes multi-attribute and learning capabilities as well as distributed dependencies resolution is here proposed for VO formation. "Phased commitment" is another concept here introduced for VO operation monitoring through the Electronic Institution. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2001.