A Virtual Enterprise (VE) is a temporryl alliance between two or more Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) geographically scattered, that collaborate mutually in order to reach brand-new business opportunities that would be unreachable in other ways. It is a business collaboration standard that sights at responding to the uncertainty and instability of the present-day global economy. VE requires support for electronic contract management, since electronic contracts formalize the agreements between the participating enterprises and coordinate their behavior. Although there is an abundance of previous work on electronic contracts, presently there is a shortage of models and approaches related to VE contracts, which have an intrinsic dynamic and flexible nature, since they control independent behavior of several parties, and also aim at high automation in the development and execution. This thesis aims at contributing to the VE contracting challenge..
Contents
Chapter 1: Background
Chapter 2: Problem definition/Goals
Chapter 3: Methodology
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Contract specification
3.3 Introduction
Chapter 4: State of the art in electronic contracting
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Contract specification
4.2.1 Related work on contract specification
4.3 Deontic logic and norms
4.4 Ontologies
4.5 Relevant approaches related to electronic contracts
Chapter 5: Representation language for contracting
5.1 Overview
5.2 Contract structure
5.3 Header
5.3.1 Rolelist
5.3.2 Participants
5.3.3 Duration
5.4 The core of the contract
5.4.1 ServiceList
5.4.2 Clauses
5.4.3 Trusted Third Party
5.5 Contract example
Chapter 6: Layered Contract Ontology
6.1 Layered Structure
6.2 Top Level Contract Ontology
6.2.1 VE_Contract
6.2.2 Enterprise
6.2.3Participant_Enterprise…
Source: Blekinge Institute of Technology