A Multi-agent Based Negotiation System for Re-establishing Enterprise Interoperability in Collaborative Networked Environments

The survival of traditional enterprises within the global economy relies on their ability to embrace new ideas and new organizational forms and to imagine new ways of delivering value to customers, new approaches to collaborating in dynamic networked environments. This paper proposes a system for promoting sustainable interoperability between enterprises involved in complex networked environments through multi-level negotiation, communication and information sharing. The proposed solution is based on a multi-agent system architecture that applies rule-based negotiation at various organizational levels such as: business, ICT, workflows, data systems and people. This architecture has been tested in the case of a collaborative networked environment in which several entities, namely funding authority, beneficiary of funds, contractors and sub-contractors have been already contractually engaged and due to an announced breaking down of interoperability re-negotiation has been required in order to re-established interoperability at business level.