CrossFlow: Integrating Workflow Management and Electronic Commerce

The CrossFlow1 architecture provides support for cross-organisational workflow management in dynamically established virtual enterprises. The creation of a business relationship between a service provider organisation performing a service on behalf of a consumer organisation can be made dynamic when augmented by virtual market technology, the dynamic configuration of the contract enactment infrastructures, and the provision of fine grained service monitoring and control. Standard ways of describing services and contracts can be combined with matchmaking technology to create a virtual market for such service provision and consumption. A provider can then advertise its services in the market and consumers can search for a compatible business partner. This provides choice in selecting a partner and allows the deferment of the decision to a point in time where it can be made on the most up-to-date requirements of the consumer and service offers in the market. The penalty for deferred decision making is the time to set up the infrastructure in each organisation for the dynamically established contract. Thus, a further aspect of CrossFlow was to exploit the contract in the dynamic and automatic configuration of the contract enactment and supervision infrastructures of the respective organisations and in linking them in a dynamic fashion. The electronic contract, which results from the agreement between the newly established business partners, completely specifies the intended collaboration between them. Given the importance of the business process enacted by the provider, this includes fine-grained monitoring and control to allow tight co-operation between the organisations

Web Services Support for Dynamic Business Process Outsourcing

Outsourcing of business processes is crucial for organizations to be effective, efficient and flexible. To meet fast-changing market conditions, dynamic outsourcing is required, in which business relationships are established and enacted on-the-fly in an adaptive, fine-grained way unrestricted by geographic distance. This requires automated means for both the establishment of outsourcing relationships and for the enactment of services performed in these relationships over electronic channels. Due to wide industry support and the underlying model of loose coupling of services, Web services increasingly become the mechanism of choice to connect organizations across organizational boundaries. This paper analyzes to which extent Web services support the dynamic process outsourcing paradigm. We discuss contract -based dynamic business process outsourcing to define requirements and then introduce the Web services framework. Based on this, we investigate the match between the two. We observe that the Web services framework requires further support for cross - organizational business processes and mechanisms for contracting, QoS management and process-based transaction support and suggest ways to fill those gaps

Library purchasing consortia: their activity and effect on the marketplace

This chapter is based on a survey undertaken for a BLRIC/LIC-funded research project (RIC/G/403). It describes the models of operation of purchasing consortia in three library sectors (health, higher education and public libraries) and discusses present and future savings deriving from consortial activity. The effects of consortia on suppliers are discussed and future activity predicted. The views expressed are those of the authors, not of BLRIC or LIC

The distance selling directive: consumer champion or complete irrelevance?

This paper investigates the origins, significant content, UK and EU implementation and outcomes of Directive 97/7/EC on distance selling, hereafter referred to as the Distance Selling Directive (DSD). The DSD has been implemented in national legislation by all EU Member States. In the UK this legislation was the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 (SI 2000 No. 2334), hereafter referred to as the CPDSR

A Multi-Disciplinary Approach For Determining Adoption Of Agricultural Price Risk Management Strategies

Australian wool producers have been slow to adopt price risk management strategies to stabilise the income from their wool sales. The highly volatile auction system accounts for 85% of raw wool sales while the remainder is sold by forward contract, futures and other hedging methods. Qualitative analysis was used to find behavioural factors associated with the adoption of price risk management strategies (specifically futures and forward contracts) for selling raw wool. Consideration was given to Diffusion of Innovations and the Theory of Planned Behaviour as theoretical frameworks in order to answer the research question: Are there any non-traditional behavioural factors that need to be incorporated into existing frameworks to determine adoption of price risk management strategies for selling raw wool? In contrast to these prominent theories, data from four focus groups conducted with wool producers in regional Western Australia showed that trust, habit and social cohesion were the major behavioural determinants that governed the adoption of price risk management strategies. The significance of this paper lies in its multi-disciplinary approach to understanding the dimensions of farm-level decision making.Qualitative analysis, trust, habit, social cohesion, forward contracts, wool., Agricultural Finance, Risk and Uncertainty,

Inter-organizational negotiation of web-services

The web service technology allows organizations to interact through business processes. \ud However, organizations involved in cooperative business processes have different interests \ud and points of view. A negotiation allows them to discuss their interests and requirements in \ud order to reach an acceptable agreement. We propose an integrated web service negotiation \ud process that takes into account human interaction and the use of different negotiation \ud protocols. It focuses on the application of feature modelling to describe the negotiated \ud services. Our contributions include: (i) the definition of a negotiation process; (ii) the \ud definition of a conceptual model to support the negotiation of web services; (iii) reuse of \ud artefacts generated throughout the negotiation process; (iv) coverage of critical elements in \ud the negotiation of electronic contracts, such as role, properties of electronic services and \ud contract models; and (v) exploration of the process in different application scenario