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The purpose of this research is to develop a prototype of agent‐based intelligent workflow system for product design collaboration in a distributed network environment.

This research separates the collaborative workflow enactment mechanisms from the collaborative workflow building tools for flexible workflow management. Applying the XML/RDF (resource description framework) ontology schema, workflow logic is described in a standard representation. Lastly, a case study in collaborative system‐on‐chip (SoC) design is depicted to demonstrate the agent‐based workflow system for the design collaboration on the web.

Agent technology can overcome the difficulty of interoperability in cross‐platform, distributed environment with standard RDF data schema. Control and update of workflow functions become flexible and versatile by simply modifying agent reasoning and behaviors.

When business partners want to collaborate, how to integrate agents in different workflows becomes a critical issues.

Agent technology can facilitate design cooperation and teamwork communication in a collaborative, transparent product development environment.

This research establishes generalized flow logic RDF models and an agent‐based intelligent workflow management system, called AWfMS, based on the RDF schema of workflow definition. AWfMS minimizes barriers in the distributed design process and hence increases design cooperations among partners.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how collaborative contracts can improve industrial maintenance contract relationships.

The research compares performance contracts with collaborative contracts, a new contract type whereby the contract parties align their objectives. The study uses game theory and describes the contract types as mechanism designs to compare the contract types. The mechanisms are validated with case studies. The utility of the contract types is verified with Monte Carlo simulations using expert opinions.

The research demonstrates that, under certain conditions, collaborative contracts result in a higher utility than performance contracts for all contract parties.

The use of collaborative contracts between an operator of a technical system and a maintenance organisation reduces maintenance costs and improves the availability of the technical system, increasing the utility for all contract parties.

The collaborative contract is a new contract type for maintenance services and the research method provides a new approach to optimise industrial maintenance contract relationships.

Presents a multi‐agent system (MAS) for collaborative design in the construction sector. The system is intended to form a basis for integrating the often distributed cross‐functional activities that characterise collaborative design in construction. The MAS supports interaction and negotiation between the different agents that represent various participants that are usually engaged in a typical collaborative project design. The system is composed of different agents that provide services within the MAS environment. While some of the support services are provided by the agent platform, task agents that represent various functional disciplines undertake the real design activities. Describes details of the MAS, which simulates and demonstrates peer‐to‐peer interaction, communication and negotiation between the design agents in a collaborative design space. Also highlights important issues in MAS development and makes recommendations on how to improve collaborative design in construction using the MAS paradigm.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that collaborative contracts enable inter‐organisational quality systems. Design/methodology/approach – The research compares performance contracts with collaborative contracts, a new contract type whereby the contract parties align their objectives. The study uses game theory and describes the contract types as mechanism designs for comparison. The mechanisms are validated with a case study. The utility of the contract types is verified with Monte Carlo simulations using expert opinions. Findings – The research demonstrates that, under certain conditions, collaborative contracts enable inter‐organisational quality systems by facilitating the exchange of information between the contract parties and investments in inter‐organisational work processes. Practical implications – The use of collaborative contracts between an operator of a technical system and a maintenance organisation leads to improvements in inter‐organisational work processes, reducing maintenance costs and improving the availability of the technical system; thereby increasing the utility of all contract parties. Originality/value – The collaborative contract is a new contract type for maintenance services and the research method provides a new approach to enable inter‐organisational quality systems.

Recommender agents are used to make recommendations of interesting items in a wide variety of application domains, such as web page recommendation, music, e‐commerce, movie recommendation, tourism, restaurant recommendation, among others. Despite the various and different domains in which recommender agents are used and the variety of approaches they use to represent user interests and make recommendations, there is some functionality that is common to all of them, such as user model management and recommendation of interesting items. This paper aims at generalizing these common behaviors into a framework that enables developers to reuse recommender agents' main characteristics in their own developments.

This work presents a framework for recommendation that provides the control structures, the data structures and a set of algorithms and metrics for different recommendation methods. The proposed framework acts as the base design for recommender agents or applications that want to add the already modeled and implemented capabilities to their own functionality. In contrast with other proposals, this framework is designed to enable the integration of diverse user models, such as demographic, content‐based and item‐based. In addition to the different implementations provided for these components, new algorithms and user model representations can be easily added to the proposed approach. Thus, personal agents originally designed to assist a single user can reuse the behavior implemented in the framework to expand their recommendation strategies.

The paper describes three different recommender agents built by materializing the proposed framework: a movie recommender agent, a tourism recommender agent, and a web page recommender agent. Each agent uses a different recommendation approach. PersonalSearcher, an agent originally designed to suggest interesting web pages to a user, was extended to collaboratively assist a group of users using content‐based algorithms. MovieRecommender recommends interesting movies using an item‐based approach and Traveller suggests holiday packages using demographic user models. Findings encountered during the development of these agents and their empirical evaluation are described here.

The advantages of the proposed framework are twofold. On the one hand, the functionality provided by the framework enables the development of recommender agents without the need for implementing its whole set of capabilities from scratch. The main processes and data structures of recommender agents are already implemented. On the other hand, already existing agents can be enhanced by incorporating the functionality provided by the recommendation framework in order to act collaboratively.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the factors influencing bargaining decisions and systematically develop a framework to support collaborative innovation within a strategic alliance. This framework can help companies resolve bargaining problems and facilitate cooperation and effective negotiation of strategic alliances to build successful business relationships.

The study considers Taiwanese agents’ bargaining power during negotiations with suppliers, using decision analysis to identify the variables affecting judgment. It uses Delphi–AHP methods to evaluate and develop a multi-criteria model explaining the critical factors to increase agents’ bargaining power and collaborative capability in the negotiation process.

Two significant differences between supply chain management practices and managerial specialty are found. Results suggest that better supply chain management practices of agents could assist suppliers in reducing their stock and processing delivery costs, and suppliers could offer more of their marketing planning and strategies to agents to increase confidence in each other’s products.

It is hoped that this study will encourage more academics in the supply chain management field to investigate the extent to which other bargaining considerations act as facilitating or constraining factors in other Asian and non-Asian economies and other industries.

This study focuses on collaborative thinking and cooperation to develop and improve positive and relational outcomes in agent–supplier relationships.

The study analyzed the bargaining power of agents and collaborative innovation in the semiconductor industry from three major perspectives: professional competence, managerial competence and channel efficiency. The study provides effective suggestions for enhancing profits in agency-based cooperation.

To describe some research done, as part of an EPSRC funded project, to assist engineers working together on collaborative tasks.

Distributed finite state modelling and agent techniques are used successfully in a new hybrid self‐organising decision making system applied to collaborative work support. For the particular application, analysis of the tasks involved has been performed and these tasks are modelled. The system then employs a novel generic agent model, where task and domain knowledge are isolated from the support system, which provides relevant information to the engineers.

The method is applied in the despatch of transmission commands within the control room of The National Grid Company Plc (NGC) – tasks are completed significantly faster when the system is utilised.

The paper describes a generic approach and it would be interesting to investigate how well it works in other applications.

Although only one application has been studied, the methodology could equally be applied to a general class of cooperative work environments.

One key part of the work is the novel generic agent model that enables the task and domain knowledge, which are application specific, to be isolated from the support system, and hence allows the method to be applied in other domains.

The implementation of collaborative systems in learning situations frequently suffers from an emphasis on technical issues, which often leads to a neglect of the problems encountered when learners have to solve tasks jointly. This paper describes how a Simulated Student may be used in synchronous collaborative applications with the goal of monitoring students’ actions in order to detect and correct specific types of disfunctioning in collaboration. Several experiments were carried out with the intention of testing whether the Simulated Student was useful. Data showed that in the majority of the cases the Simulated Student detected and avoided “negative situations” and, what is more, it also improved students’ learning.

The purpose of this paper is to design a system deployment model that integrates case-based agent technique to develop an eco-responsibility decision support tool for greening educational institutions toward environmental responsibility.

Data were collected through questionnaires distributed among a statistical population that comprised practitioners across educational institutions in Malaysia that implement green practices. The questionnaire measured the feasibility of the developed tool based on factors derived from the literature. Accordingly, descriptive, exploratory and factor analysis approach using statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) was used to test the feasibility of the developed tool.

Results from descriptive analysis confirm the tool is feasible based on mean values that range from 4.1619 to 3.6508 on a five-point scale, indicating that the tool is effective in sustaining educational institutions going green. Besides, results from exploratory analysis verify the reliability of the tool based on the acceptable Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient score higher than 0.7 and Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin value being above 0.5. Finally, results from factor analysis reveal that the developed tool is usable, efficient, helpful, flexible and credible and supports educational institutions in going green at 88.44 per cent of the total variance, suggesting that the respondents are satisfied with the tool.

The sample population in this study comprises only practitioners from educational institutions in Malaysia. Theoretically, this research provides feasibility factors and associated items that can be used in evaluating developed information systems.

Practically, this study develops an eco-responsibility decision support tool to facilitate green strategies and provides information on how practitioners in educational institutions can improve green growth.

This study presents how case-oriented agents aid educational institutions in going green for environmental responsibility. Socially, this research provides the strategies for green practice improvement in educational institutions toward environmental responsibility.

The eco-responsibility decision support tool provides a Web-based platform for promoting ecological protection by supporting the measuring of practitioners’ current green practices for environmental responsibility. Thus, research findings from this study are expected to help decision-makers generate useful insights into environment-friendly strategies to be implemented in educational institutions. Lastly, the statistical tests adopted in this paper can be used to gauge the feasibility of information system application in future.

This paper aims to present a model of collaborative inquiry play: rule-based imaginary situations that provide challenging problems and support agentic multiplayer interactions (c.f., Vygotsky, 1967; Salen and Zimmerman, 2003). Drawing on problem-based learning (PBL, Hmelo-Silver, 2004), this paper provides a design case to articulate the relationship between the design goals and the game-based learning environment.

Drawing on conjecture mapping (Sandoval, 2014), this paper presents an iterative development of the conjecture map for crystal island: ecojourneys and highlights the development of the story and tools in crystal island: ecojourneys, an immersive game based on PBL pedagogy. By articulating this development, the authors highlight the affordances and constraints of designing for collaborative inquiry play and address challenges in supporting learner agency.

The PBL inquiry process served as the foundation of collaborative inquiry play. Attending to the rules of inquiry fostered student agency, and in turn, playful engagement in the game-based learning environment. Agency however meant holding students accountable to actions undertaken, especially as it pertained to generating group-based explanations and reflecting on productive collaboration. Moreover, socially shared regulation of learning and systems thinking concepts (i.e. phenomenon, mechanisms, and components) must also be externalized in representations and interactions in the game such that students have the agency to decide on their learning paths.

This paper presents the model of collaborative inquiry play and highlights how to support player agency and design content-rich play environments which are not always completely open.