Cross-organizational Collaboration Research Articles

Context-aware trust negotiation in peer-to-peer service collaborations

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) and Software as a Service (SaaS) are the latest hot topics to software manufacturing and delivering, and attempt to provide a dynamic cross-organisational business integration solution. In a dynamic cross-organisational collaboration environment, services involved in a business process are generally provided by different organisations, and lack supports of common security mechanisms and centralized management middleware. On such occasions, services may have to achieve middleware functionalities and achieve business objectives in a pure peer-to-peer fashion. As the participating services involved in a business process may be selected and combined at run time, a participating service may have to collaborate with multiple participating services which it has no pre-existing knowledge in prior. This introduces some new challenges to traditional trust management mechanisms. Automated Trust Negotiation (ATN) is a practical approach which helps to generate mutual trust relationship for collaborating principals which may have no pre-existing knowledge about each other without in a peer-to-peer way. Because credentials often contain sensitive attributes, ATN defines an iterative and bilateral negotiation process for credentials exchange and specifies security policies that regulate the disclosure of sensitive credentials. Credentials disclosure in the iterative process may follow different orders and combinations, each of which forms a credential chain. It is practically desirable to identify the optimal credential chain that satisfies certain objectives such as minimum release of sensitive information and minimum performance penalty. In this paper we present a heuristic and context-aware algorithm for identifying the optimal chain that uses context-related knowledge to minimize 1) the release of sensitive information including both credentials and policies and 2) the cost of credentials retrieving. Moreover, our solution offers a hierarchical method for protecting sensitive policies and provides a risk-based strategy for handling credential circular dependency. We have implemented the ATN mechanisms based on our algorithm and incorporated them into the CROWN Grid middleware. Experimental results demonstrate their performance-related advantages over other existing solutions.

A MEDICAL KNOWLEDGE SERVICE SYSTEM FOR CROSS-ORGANIZATIONAL HEALTHCARE COLLABORATION

Collaboration among healthcare organizations depends on coordination, communication and control among healthcare organizations and effective sharing of medical information and knowledge. Medical services are knowledge-intensive activities. All information, knowledge, techniques and experience should be integrated, managed and shared using the Internet and information technology. Overall medical service quality and efficiency would be improved markedly if medical professionals and staff at different healthcare organizations could use and share medical knowledge resources. Therefore, a collaborative medical knowledge service would promote medical service quality. This study presents a novel medical knowledge service system for cross-organizational healthcare collaboration such that all medical professionals and staff at different healthcare organizations could capture, store, manage, integrate and share medical knowledge. This system should improve medical service quality and efficiency, and promote competition in the healthcare industry. Thus, this study (i) proposes a collaborative medical knowledge service model, (ii) designs a collaborative medical knowledge service system framework, (iii) develops this proposed system, and (iv) evaluates the developed system based on user satisfaction.

Research priorities in nursing – a Delphi study among Swedish nurses

The main aim was to illuminate essential areas for future patient-related nursing research. The secondary aim was to stimulate nurses to explore important research areas based on clinical practice. Priority-setting is regarded as one of the main strategies to ensure excellence in nursing science, to direct nursing research and develop healthcare practice accordingly as well as strengthening the nursing profession's research commitment. A three-round Delphi survey was conducted. A panel of 118 clinicians, in various nursing, teaching and administrative positions participated. Ninety-five panel members completed all three rounds (81%). The majority were female, aged 25-67 (mean 49) years, with an average of 23 (range 1-40) years in nursing, working in hospitals (42%), primary healthcare centres, community care (44%) and administration/education (14%). Sixty-six per cent had graduate diplomas and 34% had an academic education, ranging from bachelors' to doctoral degrees. Three hundred and eighty nursing research areas were identified, evaluated and ranked using content analysis and descriptive statistics. The participants' prioritized research aimed at preserving humanistic values and developing cross-organisational collaboration in the healthcare system. Nursing research aimed at preserving human dignity in geriatric care, respectful transfers, continuity of care and exploring the characteristics of a caring encounter were ranked high relative to the patient welfare, to the healthcare organisation and to the nursing profession. Nurses prioritize research that will improve clinical practice, assure patients' wellbeing and a caring environment. Nurses can reach consensus on the objectives of patient-related nursing research despite differences in age, workplace, educational period and level of academic degree. Relevance to clinical practice. When prioritizing important areas for patient-related nursing research, informed nursing practitioners' commitment initiates knowledge development within clinical practice from a nursing science perspective as well as expanding cross-professional and cross-organisational collaboration.

Global industrialisation of information-intensive services: a reference architecture for electronic business media

The relentless march of improvements in the cost-performance ratio of information technology today, facilitates the provision and consumption of Electronic Information-Intensive Services (EIIS) across company boundaries. However, existing products and services exhibit both managerial and technological weaknesses. Therefore, new concepts are required to facilitate a comprehensive industrialisation of cross-organisational EIIS. In this work, we present and thoroughly discuss a modular, service-oriented reference architecture for electronic business media which allows for realising 'Lean' management and implementation of cross-organisational collaboration. Based on the IEEE Recommended Practice for Architectural Description, in combination with the St. Gallen Media Reference Model, this reference architecture provides four main views: community (structural organisation), process (process-oriented organisation), services and infrastructure. By applying this reference architecture to the case of public administration in Switzerland, we show its potential to realise a 'Lean' organisation and implementation of cross-organisational electronic collaboration.

Constructing customized process views

To enable effective cross-organizational collaborations, process providers have to offer external views on their internal processes to their partners. A process view hides details of an internal process that are secret to or irrelevant for the partners. This paper describes a formal two-step approach for constructing customized process views on structured process models. First, a non-customized process view is constructed from an internal structured process model by aggregating internal activities the provider wishes to hide. Second, a customized process view is constructed by hiding and omitting activities from the non-customized view that are not requested by the process consumer. The feasibility of the approach is shown by means of a case study.

Minerva unbound: Knowledge stocks, knowledge flows and new knowledge production

Regional growth of new knowledge in nanotechnology, as measured by counts of articles and patents in the open-access digital library NanoBank, is shown to be positively affected both by the size of existing regional stocks of recorded knowledge in all scientific fields, and the extent to which tacit knowledge in all fields flows between institutions of different organizational types. The level of federal funding has a large, robust impact on both publication and patenting. The data provide support for the cumulative advantage model of knowledge production, and for ongoing efforts to institutionalize channels through which cross-organizational collaboration may be achieved.

Build grid-enabled large-scale collaboration environment in e-Learning grid

Abstract As a new branch of grid computing, e-Learning grid is emerging as a nationwide e-Learning infrastructure, which can provide innovative learning experience for learners. In such a grid environment, collaboration services will be the key elements due to the pervasive requirement for cooperative work and collaborative learning. Although there exist enormous research efforts on grid-based collaboration technologies, most of them have many limitations. In this paper, with the findings from the computer support cooperative work (CSCW)/computer support collaborative learning (CSCL) and advantages provided by grid, we propose to build grid-enabled large-scale collaboration environment (GLCE). GLCE focuses on distributed, large-scale, and cross-organizational collaboration through creating group-centered next generation collaboration environment, where both intra-group and inter-group collaboration could be supported. With this idea in mind, we present a grid-based cooperative work framework (GCWF), which aims to implement GLCE with an “upper layer” collaboration middleware based on the special-purpose grid infrastructure designed by our team. The preliminary results of our research on GLCE have been applied to build the learning assessment grid (LAGrid). The goal of LAGrid is to support the formative assessment business in China Radio and TV University (CRTVU) and large-scale collaboration within virtual organization (VO) has been realized.

Enhanced Production Processes Through Network Groups

Increased focus on core activities in manufacturing companies makes cross-organizational collaboration necessary to develop and produce complex products or systems. To enhance the production process efficiency of a network, companies have to go beyond formal routines and learn about each other's, and thus their common, production process. The interaction between members of an organization and outside scientists encourages the members to reflect on their work. To improve a business there is a need of diversity, but also a need for understanding different viewpoints. Thus, it is necessary to create constructive conflicts among a variety of viewpoints.

Principles and Practices of Organizationally Integrated Evaluation

Abstract: Evaluation is often conceptualized in terms of static research designs focused on specific questions of programmatic process or outcome. Another way to conceptualize evaluation is to broaden its scope, role, and methods and to integrate its principles and processes into every aspect of a program’s organizational environment. The principles and practices of learning organizations, total quality management, continuous program improvement, and empowerment evaluation provide useful tools for conceptualizing the multiplicity of roles for evaluation within complex public-sector organizational environments. The authors have developed 20 guiding principles for engaging in organizationally integrated evaluation: the concepts of multiple constituent needs, cultural appropriateness, effective leadership of the process, total organizational commitment, continuous improvement, constancy of purpose, organizational teamwork, empowerment within the organization, training and development, cross-organizational collaboration, organizational integration, development and change, multiplicity of methods, statistical process control, goals of efficiency and effectiveness, goals of knowledge building, utility of outcomes, feasibility, propriety and ethical status of the process, and accuracy of outcomes. The authors discuss these principles as applicable to existing evaluation processes and provide a case example of their use in local evaluation of a Native American community.