Agent-based decentralized coordination for electronic markets

Enterprises face stiff competition and the pressure to improve efficiency and productivity. Since the cost of production could be reduced in the last years, further reductions can be obtained e.g. by spreading production processes over organizational boundaries to use the key competencies of the involved organizations. This shift increases the number of external links and transactions of enterprises and leads to a change from hierarchical coordinated organizations to business networks. The resulting decentralization requires new and efficient ways of coordination to ensure that the rise in productivity is not lowered or even over-compensated by coordination overhead.