Establishing agreements in dynamic virtual organizations

We present a framework that introduces key concepts relevant to agreement negotiation in virtual organizations (VO). The framework serves as a foundation for implementing an automated system that facilitates the establishment of VO agreements, considerably reduces the effort for setting up a VO and consequently reduces the VO´s time for operation. The framework captures the relationship between the initial participants´ behaviors, expectations, obligations and agreements, making sure that in implementing a system, one does not overlook the important aspects of the agreement structure and negotiation. The framework can be used to validate a negotiation, ensure validity of the achieved agreement and form strategies for future negotiations. A novel aspect of the initial trust establishment described in this paper is the consideration of the effects of the participants´ behaviors during the negotiation process on mutual trust. We use the concepts to describe our work-in-progress for specification and negotiation of the agreements that govern the behavior of VO entities.