Use of roles and policies for specifying and managing a virtual enterprise

One of the problems faced by an organisation participating in a virtual enterprise is how to specify internal and external aspects of the organisation in terms of the organisational roles involved and policies applicable to the roles. Another problem is how to manage such a virtual organisation and guarantee that its operations are in agreement with the specification. We present two role-based approaches that address these problems. The first approach is based on the RMODP framework and can be used to specify structure and interactions in a virtual enterprise. The second approach was initially aimed at managing large distributed systems, but can also be used to specify and implement roles and policies relating to a virtual enterprise. We analyse the relationships between these two approaches and illustrate how they can be applied by means of a simplified virtual hospital example