Using Intelligent Agents to Build E-Business Software

Agent architectures are gaining popularity for building open, distributed, and evolving software required by e-commerce applications. Unfortunately, despite considerable work in software architecture during the last decade, few research efforts have aimed at truly defining patterns and languages for agent architectural design. This paper proposes a modern approach based on organizational structures and architectural description languages to define and specify agent architectures notably in the case of e-commerce system design

An Architectural Approach to Managing Knowledge Stocks and Flows: Implications for Reinventing the HR Function

Sustainable competitive advantage is increasingly dependent upon a firm’s ability to manage both its knowledge stocks and flows. We examine how different employees’ knowledge stocks are managed within a firm and how—through their recombination and renewal—those stocks can create sustainable competitive advantage. To do this, we first establish an architectural framework for managing human resources and review how the framework provides a foundation for studying alternative employment arrangements used by firms in allocating knowledge stocks. Next, we extend the architecture by examining how knowledge stocks (human capital) can be both recombined and renewed through cooperative and entrepreneurial archetypes. We then position two HR configurations to focus on facilitating these two archetypes. By identifying and managing different forms of social capital across employee groups within the architecture, HR practices can facilitate the flow of knowledge within the firm, which ultimately leads to sustainable competitive advantage

Considering Structural Properties of Inter-organizational Network Fragments during Business-IT Alignment

Value exchange models can be used to reason about possible networked business constellations. Such inter-organizational business settings are determined in most cases solely from a financial point of view, i.e. by assessing the economic sustainability of the constellation. In this paper we discuss also other criteria that are relevant and should additionally be considered, namely the structural properties of the inter-organizational constellation itself. The multitude of possible interorganizational business constellations – and underlying systems constellations respectively – makes it a necessary requirement to split such constellations into recurring structural patterns, which we call fragments. The structural properties are helping the designer to reason about quality related issues of the inter-organizational network, and may have an influence on design choices to be made. The paper suggests to design new e-business constellations not only on the basis of financial criteria, but to consider also quality issues of the inter-organizational network

Modelling workplace contact networks: the effects of organizational structure, architecture, and reporting errors on epidemic predictions

Face-to-face social contacts are potentially important transmission routes for acute respiratory infections, and understanding the contact network can improve our ability to predict, contain, and control epidemics. Although workplaces are important settings for infectious disease transmission, few studies have collected workplace contact data and estimated workplace contact networks. We use contact diaries, architectural distance measures, and institutional structures to estimate social contact networks within a Swiss research institute. Some contact reports were inconsistent, indicating reporting errors. We adjust for this with a latent variable model, jointly estimating the true (unobserved) network of contacts and duration-specific reporting probabilities. We find that contact probability decreases with distance, and research group membership, role, and shared projects are strongly predictive of contact patterns. Estimated reporting probabilities were low only for 0-5 minute contacts. Adjusting for reporting error changed the estimate of the duration distribution, but did not change the estimates of covariate effects and had little effect on epidemic predictions. Our epidemic simulation study indicates that inclusion of network structure based on architectural and organizational structure data can improve the accuracy of epidemic forecasting models.Comment: 36 pages, 4 figure

Beyond words: Aesthetic knowledge and knowing in design

Aesthetic knowledge comes from practitioners understanding the look, feel, smell, taste and sound of things. It is vital to work in many organizational contexts. In this paper, we explore aesthetic knowledge and knowing in organizations through detailed observation of design work in the architectural practice Edward Cullinan Architects. Through our research, we explore aesthetic knowledge in the context of architectural work, we unpack what it is, how it is generated, and how it is applied in design projects, shared between practitioners and developed at the level of the organization. Our analysis suggests that aesthetic knowledge plays an important part in organizational practice, not only as the symbolic context for work, but as an integral part of the work that people do. It suggests that aesthetic reflexivity, which involves an opening up and questioning of what is known, is experienced as part of practice as well as a `time out' from practice

Towards a Layered Architectural View for Security Analysis in SCADA Systems

Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems support and control the operation of many critical infrastructures that our society depend on, such as power grids. Since SCADA systems become a target for cyber attacks and the potential impact of a successful attack could lead to disastrous consequences in the physical world, ensuring the security of these systems is of vital importance. A fundamental prerequisite to securing a SCADA system is a clear understanding and a consistent view of its architecture. However, because of the complexity and scale of SCADA systems, this is challenging to acquire. In this paper, we propose a layered architectural view for SCADA systems, which aims at building a common ground among stakeholders and supporting the implementation of security analysis. In order to manage the complexity and scale, we define four interrelated architectural layers, and uses the concept of viewpoints to focus on a subset of the system. We indicate the applicability of our approach in the context of SCADA system security analysis.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

From service-oriented architecture to service-oriented enterprise

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) was originally motivated by enterprise demands for better business-technology alignment and higher flexibility and reuse. SOA evolved from an initial set of ideas and principles to Web services (WS) standards now widely accepted by industry. The next phase of SOA development is concerned with a scalable, reliable and secure infrastructure based on these standards, and guidelines, methods and techniques for developing and maintaining service delivery in dynamic enterprise settings. In this paper we discuss the principles and main elements of SOA. We then present an overview of WS standards. And finally we come back to the original motivation for SOA, and how these can be realized

Rules of Engagement: Architecture Theory and the Social Sciences in Frank Duffy’s 1974 Thesis on Office Planning

This paper addresses the broad shift that took place in architectural theory and education in the 70s, where models of the discipline asserting the autonomy of architecture eclipsed models privileging architecture’s ties to other disciplines, particularly technology and the social sciences. With Frank Duffy's Princeton thesis on open office planning (1974) as a focus, the paper explores the theoretical and institutional contexts of this shift and offers a critical reappraisal in light of contemporary issues facing architecture.architectural theory, office space, planning, architectural education