Advancing Adaptivity in Enterprise Collaboration

Enterprise interoperability and collaborative work are two aspects to involve in knowledge oriented enterprise collaboration. The first one implies a rather systemic view, the second one a rather activity related view on collaboration of enterprises within their ecosystems. For example, manufacturing or distribution are often dealt with by applying an input-output perspective. Product development or supply maintenance are increasingly organized as a set of networked activities performed by different actors inside and outside the enterprise, and therefore are to be dealt with by applying the perspective of composite practices. Information technology is challenged to support both aspects. However, the predominant approaches in modelling and engineering of systems still permit instantiations with low adaptivity. This interferes with easy take-up in business practice. On this background, the paper suggests enhancing existing structure with additional features to ease adaptivity of enterprise collaboration systems. It reflects work that was done on the subjects of enterprise interoperability and collaborative working environments.