Heiko Duin

Jens Eschenbächer

Klaus-Dieter Thoben

Modelling Dynamics in Collaboration: An Extension to the Collaborative Network Relationship Analysis

Keywords: Dynamic Collaborative Network Relationship Analysis (DCNRA), MetaMatrix, Modelling and Simulation

This is a concept paper which introduces a dynamic extension to a collaborative network relationship analysis approach. The extension is based on the MetaMatrix approach known from the Dynamic Network Analysis field. Several entity classes representing agents, tasks, resources and knowledge are introduced and possible relations between entities of the different classes are analysed. All entity classes and relation classes are attributed with time related data which allows dynamic changes the system. Finally, some illustrative examples of typical collaborative interactions are introduced and explained.

Introduction

The Social Network Analysis (SNA) is an appropriate method to capture and analyze relations between individuals or organizations for a given point in time [START_REF] Wasserman | Social Network Analysis. Methods and Applications[END_REF]. The Collaborative Network Relationship Analysis (CNRA) is based on the SNA and focuses on the relations between independent organizations collaborating in networks [START_REF] Jagdev | Anatomy of Enterprise Collaborations[END_REF]) and forming a Collaborative Networked Organization (CNO) [START_REF] Camarinha-Matos | Collaborative Networked Organizations -Concepts and Practice in Manufacturing Enterprises[END_REF]. It analyzes the type and intensity of interactions between those organizations (Eschenbächer & Thoben, 2009;Eschenbächer et al, 2009). The CNRA still lacks the inclusion of dynamic changes in such relationships caused by continuous changes in network constellations over time.

Dynamic Network Analysis (DNA) has been developed to overcome the limitation of considering static network models and includes a dynamic component [START_REF] Carley | Toward an Interoperable Dynamic Network Analysis Toolkit[END_REF]. The heart of this approach is the so-called meta-matrix which allows defining multi-modal, multi-plex dynamic networks supporting various properties and measures connected to nodes, edges and graphs.

This paper presents an extension to the CNRA approach based on DNA to include mechanisms allowing the modelling of dynamic aspects of Collaborative Networked Organizations. The focus of the modelling is still on different types of interactions between organisations in a network but includes their evolution. This allows a more comprehensive and prospective evaluation of the performance and the design of the network. The dynamic extension of CNRA is called the DCNRA. A short example explains the application of the DCNRA.

As the traditional SNA approaches often use graph theory terminology and notation [START_REF] Wasserman | Social Network Analysis. Methods and Applications[END_REF], this style is also used within this paper.

Current State-of-the-Art

This section provides a short overview on what has been done in Collaborative Network Relationship Analysis and introduces the MetaMatrix approach which is the basis for Dynamic Network Analysis.

Summary of the CNRA

The Collaborative Network Relationship Analysis (CNRA) has first been introduced by Eschenbächer (Eschenbächer et al, 2009). The general idea behind this approach is the quantification of relations between organizations engaged in a Collaborative Networked Organisation as defined by the ECOLEAD project (Camarinha-Matos et al, 2008). The quantification of inter-organizational relations allows the calculation of specific indicators measuring among others the collaboration intensity in the network.

The CNRA knows just one entity class (node type) representing organizations, but introduces several relation (edge) types representing different categories of interactions (see Fig. 1). For each existing edge an intensity is calculated based on estimations for a set of variables connected to that category. By simply summing all intensities of all categories between two given nodes, the collaboration intensity between those organisations is calculated.

The first application area of the CNRA were innovation related projects executed in a consortium (Eschenbächer et al, 2009). The first approach to dynamics with a project management example was introduced by Eschenbächer, Duin and Thoben (2009) by introducing a start and end point in time to collaborative interactions. This allows the calculation of how strongly specific partners are involved in the execution of tasks, but still lacks the differentiation of interaction types and only has one visualisation of the Collaborative Network covering the time span from beginning to end. There is no dynamic change of the underlying graph representing the Collaborative Network.

The MetaMatrix Approach

The MetaMatrix emerged from the work of the Center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems (CASOS) located at the Carnegie Mellon University of Pittsburgh (USA). The objective behind the MetaMatrix is to introduce dynamics to Social Network Analysis (SNA) approaches [START_REF] Carley | Toward an Interoperable Dynamic Network Analysis Toolkit[END_REF].

The MetaMatrix is a multi-mode, multi-plex approach to organizational design and serves as ontology. The main entities classes are agents, knowledge, resource, task, organization and location. Nodes belonging to any two entity classes and their relations (edges) form a network like a social network or a knowledge network (knowledge by agents). Furthermore, there can exist several types of relations between nodes of two given entity classes, e.g. "is related to" or "receives instructions from" for nodes belonging to the agent entity class.

This approach seems to be perfectly suited to extend the CNRA with dynamic capabilities.

Extending the CNRA to the DCNRA

The basic ideas of the MetaMatrix approach are taken to extend the current CNRA approach. This includes an extension of the type of nodes, an analysis of the type of edges and the addition of properties allowing dynamic changes in the models. As this paper introduces the basic conceptual ideas behind DCNRA no formal notation is introduced which has to be done in future work.

Extending Node Types

Nodes which do only represent organizations in the CNRA approach are extended to represent other entity classes necessary to model the involvement of organizations in tasks providing necessary knowledge and/or resources. This leads to the definition of the following entity classes (Carley at al, 2007):

• Class 1 -Agent: A node of this type represents a business organisation (enterprise or company), a research organisation, a public authority or a natural person. For diagramming collaborative networks we use a circle to represent nodes of this type.

• Class 2 -Task: A task is another type of a node representing an operational job where one or more agents are involved to complete the task. A task is a time consuming operation which normally provides some kind of result at its completion time. Another class -the location -is also missing, but can easily be included if necessary. It makes no sense to allow edges between all of the entity classes (node types). On the other hand there may be more than one relational type between two given entity classes. A first approach to the modelling of relations is provided in Table 1. Most of the possible relations are intuitive and do not need further explanation. The reverse relations (e.g. Task → Agent, meaning that a task is performed by one or more agents) might be included for better graph traversal support, but is not necessarily needed as this information can also be retrieved by generating the set of all agents executing this task.

A set of interconnected tasks with relations of class "is followed by" can be considered as a project. The corresponding consortium (forming a Virtual Organisation) is the set of agents which have a "is involved in" relation to the tasks setting up the project. Fig. 2 shows an example of a CNO modelled with this approach. There are three organisations involved in the collaborative execution of a couple of tasks. For task execution some kind of resources and knowledge is needed and provided by the involved organisations.

All entities and relations can have additional attributes. Especially the relation Agent → Task should have an entity story the intensity of involvement of the agent in that task. A first approach could be store the percentage of the total working power of that agent put at the corresponding task.

Adding Dynamic Properties

Each of the entity classes and their corresponding relations can have dynamical properties as shown in Table 2. The relation class Task → Task can be twofold, i.e. describing that one task follows another one or that the task is a sub-task of another one. Both relation classes don't have direct time related attributes, but can be used for consistency checks, e.g. whether a follow-up task really starts after the predecessor finishes.

Entity

Table 2 summarises time related attributes given to entity and relational classes. All of them have some kind of a beginning (start or birth) and an end-date of their existence. With the help of the definition of these times related attributes a kind of dynamics can be introduced. For a given point in time t only those entities are existent where t is between the beginning and the end of the existence. Formally, all the other entities do exist as well but only virtually. They are not visible for that moment t. When moving the along a timeline the shape of the considered graph is changing depending on the life spans of the single nodes and edges. A few examples are shown in the following chapter.

Several time dependent indicators can be calculated, stored and dynamically updated. Examples are:

• Collaboration intensity of an agent for a given time span.

• Cumulative collaboration intensity for a set of tasks.

• Needed collaboration intensity for the execution of a set of coherent tasks.

• Total planned collaboration intensity for a Virtual Organisation • Total real collaboration intensity for a Virtual Organisation • etc. Time related attributes for nodes of the task class are differentiated in planned and real beginning and end. This allows executing a simulation of the task models by making assumptions on the real start and end for the considered tasks. One option could be to define a probability distribution function which could be used by a simulation algorithm to determine the "real" start and end by a random generator.

The corresponding changes in the graph over time can be performed by graph grammars or graph transformation systems.

Illustrative Example

This chapter introduces and explains some illustrative examples covering basic collaborative interactions such as information exchange, cooperative planning, and t 0 t 2 t 1 Fig. 3. Example: Knowledge transfer between two organisations collaborative execution of tasks. Similar situations are found e.g. in the execution in European research projects. Concerning the modelling of the research information there is the Common European Research Information Format (CERIF) [START_REF] Jörg | CERIF: The Common European Information Format Model. Insight into the CERIF 2008 Release[END_REF] which might be used in conjunction with the DCNRA approach.

Information Exchanges

Information exchange between two partners in the network is modelled using a task which changes the relation of another partner to a specific knowledge entity.

The situation is described by Fig. 3. At a given point in time t 0 there are two partners, one of them (partner 1) having specific knowledge. Both of them are involved in a knowledge transfer task at a later point in time, t 1 . During this task another relation to the same knowledge item is established originating at the other partner (partner 2). Later at t 2 the task has finished, and the "birth date" for partner 2 having specific knowledge is during the execution time span (or latest at the real end of that time span) of the corresponding knowledge transfer task.

Collaborative Execution

The collaborative execution of the modelled project example shown in Fig. 2 is presented in Fig. 4. Time t 0 only task T1 is active. The other tasks and their relations are not visible. At time t 1 task T1 has been finished and disappeared. Task T2 is now active and visible. In the next considered time step t 2 task T2 is also finished and tasks T3.1 and T3.2 are executed in parallel. During the first two tasks partners 1 and 2 are involved while in executing T3.1 and T3.2 partners 1 and 3 are involved

Conclusions

The presented concept has the potential to enhance the Collaborative Network Relationship Analysis with a dynamic component. This approach allows the Planners of Collaborative Networked Organisations are supported with a tool allowing the beforehand simulation and validation of that CNO. Several scenarios having changed or balanced collaboration intensities can be generated and compared. This allows also an assessment of the risks associated to each of the scenarios.

However, this approach is still in its conceptual phase. First ideas are presented here and further development of the formalism (including indicators and their formulas) is still needed. An example case study needs to be executed in a master project to show that static SNA results are not helpful in a complex and dynamic world. Also an application in real world contexts is still missing but necessary to prove its usefulness.

Fig. 1 .

 1 Fig. 1. Concept of Collaborative Network Relationship Analysis

  For diagramming purposes we use a parallelogram representing a task node.• Class 3 -Resource: A resource is any kind of machine, supporting material, working power, or other resource like energy and water. In diagrams a square is used to represent a resource node. • Class 4 -Knowledge: Knowledge can be any information stored in the brains of employees or in computers as well as competences of staff. For diagramming collaborative networks we use a triangle to represent nodes of this type. Note: in difference to the MetaMatrix there is no differentiation between agents and organizations. These two classes are represented here by just one class: the agent.

Fig. 4 .

 4 Fig. 4. Example: Collaborative execution of tasks

Table 1 .

 1 Possible sets of relations and their interpretation

Fig. 2. Modelling example with this approach

Table 2 .

 2 Time related properties of relations

Acknowledgements

This work has been partly funded by the European Commission through ICT Project COIN: Collaboration and Interoperability for networked enterprises (No. ICT-2008-216256). The authors wish to acknowledge the Commission for their support. We also wish to acknowledge our gratitude to all COIN project partners for their contribution.


Juan-Jose Alfaro-Saiz

Raul Rodríguez-Rodríguez

María-José Verdecho

Performance Management in Collaborative Networks: Difficulties and Barriers

Keywords:

Global competitiveness obliges to enterprises to collaborate in many processes such as new product and services development in order to shorten the lifecycle, development and commercialization. Therefore, the competence has drifted from an individual focus to a supply chain management one and, from some years, to a collaborative enterprises network approach. It is common to find frameworks for measuring/managing the performance within extended enterprises, supply chains, virtual enterprises, etc. However, few authors deal with a higher level: the collaborative networks one. This concept of enterprises management set up bigger difficulties regarding not only from a conceptual and structural point of view but also considering both the design and posterior development of systems capable of managing the performance achieved in this type of organizations. This work describes both the main difficulties and barriers when trying to apply performance management concepts to collaborative networks. In this sense, it is highlighted the weaknesses of the existing intra-organizational frameworks that cannot be projected, as they are conceived, to manage performance within collaborative networks.

Introduction

One of the strategies used to compete and adapt to global market needs is cooperation among organizations. Thus, searching for new business opportunities reaches a dimension of shared effort and responsibility in order to improve the quality of the products and services. Competitiveness has shifted from an individual factor to be dependent on the whole value chain of the product and/or service offered. Several authors affirm the importance of this thematic, [START_REF] Hausman | Supply chain performance metrics. The practice of supply chain management: Where theory and application converge[END_REF] affirms, "the battleground of the next decade will be Supply Chain versus Supply Chain. Are you measuring the right things to win this battle?".

Nevertheless, today, it is not even enough to deal with the complexity of supply chains but more complex environments such as collaborative enterprise networks, which may embed to one or more supply chains. Thus, complex inter-organizational environments are composed of enterprises that are not only sharing flows of information, materials, etc. upstream and downstream (concept of supply chain) but these flows may also be without a lineal reference of products under a more or less common strategy. In this type of contexts, various enterprises and/or supply chains participate in the development of products where the customer differs that is to say the same enterprise is involved in several supply chains with different objectives, strategies, etc. This type of inter-organizational contexts has a higher level of complexity that the one of the supply chains, and then, their performance management should be dealt with management systems able to integrate all the necessary elements to measuremanage them efficiently and effectively. Although a few years ago the interest of different forums (managers, researchers, etc.) was focused on performance measurement related to the Supply Chain, it is possible in the coming years will see a clear trend regarding Collaborative Enterprise Networks (CEN).

However, it is observed a lack of works regarding elements for measuring and managing relevant factors of the Collaborative Enterprise Networks, such as collaborative activities, inter-organizational relationships, common or global objectives of the Supply Chain, etc. Collaborative relationships will require suppliers and consumers to support multiple simultaneous business models and communication media in order to fully realise the benefits of collaborative business.

The research followed a constructivist approach, based on the following activities: recompilation, analysis and study of scientific knowledge, acquisition of main postulates and construction of initial classification [START_REF] Coughlan | Action research: action research for operations management[END_REF]. The initial elements considered in the present constructivist approach were the following:

• The performance measurement/management evolution.

• The difficulties/barriers to performance management in CEN.

• The analysis of performance management systems within collaborative networks domain. After this introduction, this paper describes the evolution of the performance measurement-management from individual contexts to Collaborative Enterprise Networks contexts. Then, difficulties and barriers to performance management in Collaborative Enterprise Networks are enumerated. Next, performance management systems in this context are analyzed. Finally, conclusions are exposed.

Performance Measurement/Management Evolution: Frameworks

Performance measurement-management systems have evolved in order to adapt to complexity of organizations. Initially, they were developed for intra-organizational contexts (individual level). Then, systems for dealing with supply chains (interorganizational level) appeared. Recently, systems that try to manage CEN under an integrated approach have been developed. The intra-organizational domain has been widely studied in the literature, with various classifications and different models and frameworks such as the works by [START_REF] Kaplan | The balanced scorecard. Measures that drive performance Harvard Business Review[END_REF], [START_REF] Bourne | Designing and implementing a balanced performance measurement system Control -Official[END_REF], [START_REF] Neely | Perspectives on Performance[END_REF] and [START_REF] Hronec | Vital Signs[END_REF]. Later, at the end of 1990's, many concepts developed for intra-organizational performance measurementmanagement domain were adapted to inter-organizational domains in order to deal with supply chains. In this sense, in the literature, many works were developed; some of them from a theoretical point of view due to the difficulty of apply them in real contexts. Finally, some works have appeared that try to deal with domains that are more complex that supply chains. Thus, the works developed define complex frameworks to amplify performance measurement-management to enterprise networks that are more sophisticated. It is important to note the works by [START_REF] Bititci | Measuring and managing performance in extended enterprises[END_REF], [START_REF] Folan | Development of an extended enterprise performance measurement system[END_REF], [START_REF] Gaiardelli | Performance measurement systems in the after-sales service: an integrated framework[END_REF] and [START_REF] Alfaro | Performance measurement system for Enterprise Networks[END_REF].

In addition, there are other types of works that describe performance measurement systems to measure some collaboration aspects ( [START_REF] Romero | A conceptual Model for Virtual Breeding Environments Value System. Establishing the Foundation of Collaborative Networks[END_REF], [START_REF] Msanjila | Trust analysis and assessment in virtual organization breeding environments[END_REF], [START_REF] Bititci | Managing synergy in collaborative enterprises[END_REF]) or virtual organizations ( [START_REF] Chalmeta | Performance Measurement Systems for Virtual Enterprise Integration[END_REF] and [START_REF] Francisco | Dynamic Performance Management In Business Networks Environment[END_REF]) that may be included with some nuances in the domain of CEN.

Difficulties/Barriers to Performance Management in CEN

Performance management in CENs is not an easy task. As it cannot be managed what has not been measured before, the first aspect that has to be done is measuring its performance so that it can be managed.

CEN present a set of special characteristics that are difficulties for performance measurement systems that were not developed for this type of structures. After the analysis of the different works in the literature ( [START_REF] Bititci | Measuring and managing performance in extended enterprises[END_REF], [START_REF] Busi | Collaborative performance management: Present gaps and future research[END_REF], [START_REF] Rodriguez | Fostering collaborative meta-value chain practices[END_REF], [START_REF] Rodriguez | Establishing and keeping interorganisational collaboration: Some lessons learned[END_REF], [START_REF] Leseure | Performance measurement in organisational networks: an exploratory case study[END_REF], etc.) initially focused on structures more simple than CENs, a summary has been performed of the main difficulties/barriers that come up to this type of organization. In the next paragraphs, it is exposed the main difficulties/barriers to performance management in CENs distinguishing into four groups: A) Dynamicity and flexibility, B) Global vision, C) Broadness and D) Information systems role: intra-inter-organizational interface.

A) Dynamicity and Flexibility: enterprises have to adapt to all types of changes that occur (technological, organisational, economical, social, commercial, etc.). This circumstance affects production and organisational structures from both intra and inter-organisational points of view. This is a highly sensitive factor for CEN as any change in an enterprise may influence the global performance of the whole CEN without evidence of its appearing. From a point of view of CEN performance management, it is very important an adequate adaptation of each enterprise belonging to the CEN. There are many implications to consider: • The CEN global performance management has to be flexible and sensitive to detect dysfunctionalities that these changes may involve and has to have mechanisms that allow modifying easily the performance measurement elements if necessary (it is usually necessary). In this sense, it is a common situation to redefine objectives and/or strategies and their corresponding performance indicators. Modifying the performance measurement-management elements is quite delicate (it has to be taken into account the priorities of the CEN, a perfect coherence among elements and maintain equity within the CEN) due to the high interaction among enterprises.

• The possibility of being affected any member of the CEN without the knowledge of its existence may oblige to re-make a part of the performance measurement system which involves time, effort and loss of control of the organization during that period. • The incorporation or disappearance of members within the CEN also affects performance measurement systems in the same way as previously stated. In addition, this circumstance may obligate to establish new equity and trust relationships among their members and, consequently, reaching of consensus which involves new mechanisms of coordination and organization. If equity does not exist among the enterprises participating within the CEN, it is practically impossible to create an environment of trust that enables the information exchange necessary to reach an adequate degree of efficiency from a global point of view. Performance measurement systems may include structured mechanisms highly automated to deal with these situations.

B) Global vision: CEN performance management also means to provide a global vision. This vision is related to the use of performance measurement-management elements (objectives, strategies, key performance indicators, etc.) that aid to measure and manage not only dyad inter-enterprise efficiency and effectiveness but also the whole CEN. This is complex requirement due to CEN dimensions. This implies that global indicators are to be defined and those indicators should correspond to global CEN objectives and strategies. The use of global indicators should be a consequence of a clear structure of relationships that give response to various basic questions: • What measurement elements have been specifically defined to measure-manage the global vision of the CEN? • Are the global measurement-management elements related to partial measurement-management elements (intra-organizational level)? How do they influence each other? • What has been each KPI defined at the global level for?

• What is improved in the CEN through its measurement-management? CEN competitiveness is not only dependent on the interaction of the processes within enterprises. It is also needed to design and implement mechanisms that allow managing the whole CEN within performance measurement-management systems. This circumstance affects the phase of the design as well as the phase of implementation and management of the indicators and the rest of performance measurement elements used. C) Broadness: The concept of CEN broadness makes reference to the number of partners that belongs to the CEN. The bigger the number of partners, the higher effort is needed to manage the global performance and obviously, the scalability requirements should be taken into account. This fact may be translated into the following consequences: • Higher difficulty to establish common objectives and strategies for all the organizations that participate in the CEN. If enterprises are to be competitive and its relationship is to be sustainable, it is needed that all the members focus on strategic aspects of the business and that they have been established by consensus. • Higher difficulty to select partial and global indicators.

• Increase in the quantity of information to be managed from a global point of view and higher difficulty in maintaining trust among the partners so that information is shared with the rest of partners. • Higher difficulty in establishing linkages and equity relationships that sustain trust in order to collaborate and distribute benefits proportionally among all CEN partners. This element (equity) is very important to create a conscious and trust climate that provides the necessary information to manage CEN from a global perspective with an adequate degree of efficiency. D) Information Systems role: intra and inter-organizational interface: Another important element for CEN performance management is the use of integrated management tools that support CEN members.

It is usual that when defining performance measurement-management elements (that derivate from the performance measurement system) needed to CEN management, it is also defined the data needed to compute them and the source of that information, that is: who will provide each piece of information? How is he/she going to provide it? And at what time he/she will do it? Precisely, in this moment, discrepancies among the CEN members may appear as some of them may have difficulties to provide such data due to several reasons: information treatment (lack of resources), being unable to provide it in the right time (lack of resources) or not being able to obtain the data (lack of resources). The quantity of needed information to manage CEN is large and demands that the performance management system used provide a structure (information architecture) able to support all the data. This circumstance is vital as if common platforms are not used for uploading, transmitting and managing the data, it is practically unfeasible, from a practical point of view, that the system survives.

Currently, the use of internal information systems (based on ERs and other tools) and Web Services facilitates information management but also data homogenization and standardization mechanisms are needed. In addition, privacy policies should be established through controlled access, especially on that information sensitive to third party.

Analysis of Performance Management Systems within Collaborative Networks Domain

In this section, the most relevant performance management systems for CENs are reviewed. As explained en section two, there are four systems that stand out: [START_REF] Bititci | Measuring and managing performance in extended enterprises[END_REF], [START_REF] Folan | Development of an extended enterprise performance measurement system[END_REF], [START_REF] Gaiardelli | Performance measurement systems in the after-sales service: an integrated framework[END_REF] and [START_REF] Alfaro | Performance measurement system for Enterprise Networks[END_REF]. Then, those systems are analyzed (see Table 1) regarding to the degree of consideration of the difficulties/barriers identified in section 3. The main strengths of the EE PM model [START_REF] Bititci | Measuring and managing performance in extended enterprises[END_REF] are: that it makes explicit within the structure of the PMS the definition of performance indicators for measuring coordination through the interorganisational processes at both strategic and operational levels; makes explicit coordination measurement within the whole interorganisational processes that take part in the PMS structure. Folan & Browne [START_REF] Folan | Development of an extended enterprise performance measurement system[END_REF] developed a PMS for Extended Enterprise including mechanisms that measure the degree of contribution of each partner to the partnership (common interorganisational strategy), moreover, CEN broadness is very well treated. Gaiardelli et al. [START_REF] Gaiardelli | Performance measurement systems in the after-sales service: an integrated framework[END_REF] develop a PMS (for the automotive after-sales service network) that is composed of four functional levels: business, process, activity and organisational unit, and development and innovation. Its strength lies in the connection made on interorganisational processes, although not seen a common strategy for the global network. Finally, Alfaro et al. ( 2007) provide a PMS that follows a top-down methododology from strategy to core process decomposition and ends with the stage of follow-up and monitoring. Emphasized in the ability to measure intra and inter-aspects and defining common performance measurement elements for all CEN. On the other hand, has an acceptable architecture to address certain dynamism in the CEN.

As can be observed in Table 1, none of the relevant PMS is a soundness system that deals with the main difficulties/barriers of CEN. The aspects that are less considered are those related to dynamicity-flexibility as well as the role of Information Systems and its integration.

Conclusions

Collaborative enterprise networks are a typology of organizational structure that currently is used to deal with the competitive requirements of global market. Thus, this structure has to be analyzed and studied broadly in order its reaches efficiency. One of the challenges is the development of performance management systems able to meet the complexity associated to this type of structure which can be observed under various perspectives. The existence of this complexity presents a set of difficulties/barriers that prevent current PMS deal with its tasks properly. In this work, the main difficulties/barriers and their implications in performance measurement-management have been described by grouping them into four types: A) Dynamicity/Flexibility, B) Global vision, C) Broadness and D) Information systems role: intra and inter-organizational interface. In addition, it has been provided a brief review of PMS evolution from the individual enterprise domain to CEN domain in order to perform later an analysis of the PMS within CEN domain regarding the four difficulties/barriers. After the analysis, it is observed that it is still necessary to study further this type of structures in order to define PMS able to adapt to these contexts.

Table 1 :

 1 Analysis of PMS for CEN If the PMS does not deal with the barrier/difficulty, it is represented by ( ).• If the PMS deals with the barrier/difficulty weakly, it is represented by (*).• If the PMS deals with the barrier/difficulty moderately, it is represented by (**).• If the PMS deals with the barrier/difficulty widely, it is represented by (***).

	Difficulty / Barrier

•


A Luis Osório
email: aosorio@isel.pt

Luis M Camarinha-Matos

Hamideh Afsarmanesh
email: h.afsarmanesh@uva.nl

Cooperation Enabled Systems for Collaborative Networks

Keywords: Collaborative Networks Engineering, Cooperative Information Systems, Service Oriented Architectures

A fast evolution to collaborative business models requires novel strategies for the development of collaboration-based information technology (IT) solutions. The complexity of building such solutions based on heterogeneous sub-systems requires a multidisciplinary approach, involving the perspectives of technology and business/management. In this direction, a novel approach is proposed, introducing the notion of Cooperation Enabled System as an autonomous and adaptive computational component as the base constructor to develop open (collaborative) IT solutions.

Introduction

In a diversity of application domains we can notice that organizations are evolving towards becoming nodes of collaborative networks (CN) [START_REF] Afsarmanesh | EPAL vision 2020 for active ageing of senior professionals[END_REF], [START_REF] Camarinha-Matos | Active ageing roadmap: a collaborative networks contribution to demographic sustainability[END_REF] while participating in the offering of integrated business services. Ideally, these services are presented to clients in a way that makes transparent the participation of a diversity of organizations with their own information technology infrastructures.

The Brisa/Via-Verde tolling system and the national speed limit enforcement network are two examples of application domains that faced such challenge of adopting a collaborative networks strategy. The Brisa/Via-Verde case [START_REF] Gomes | An open integration bus for efc: The its-ibus[END_REF], [START_REF] Osório | A collaborative network case study: The extended "viaverde" toll payment system[END_REF] refers to the evolution of an existing tolling service to an integrated (multi-provider) business service, involving payments in parking lots and gas stations. One of the main problems faced in this case was the closeness of existing IT solutions; the electronic toll collection (ETC) subsystem was not prepared for the cooperation. An initial approach considered the development led by the ETC supplier as a unique possible integrator, but the adoption of proprietary processes and technology patterns resulted in an expensive "one-of-a-kind" solution. The national speed limit enforcement initiative, the SINCRO project from the Portuguese national road security authority had a quite different initial motivation. The objective of developing the network along different tendering phases suggested the adoption of a strategy aiming to guarantee the independence from the initial supplier(s). While the initial objective is to manage enforcement events directed to drivers, the adopted strategy is to establish a collaborative network involving public and private organizations.

In both Brisa/Via-Verde and SINCRO cases the aim is to offer integrated business services (IBS) implemented as collaborative processes which are supported by multiple stakeholders as nodes of a collaborative network (CN), Fig. 1. The adopted strategy in both cases features two key aspects:

i.

The proposition of a collaboration layer (CL) [START_REF] Osório | Open services ecosystem supporting collaborative networks[END_REF] as a mechanism to isolate the processes and IT culture of each participating service provider; ii.

The proposition of a generic autonomous computational entity, the collaboration enabled system (CES) [START_REF] Osório | Open services ecosystem supporting collaborative networks[END_REF], aiming to handle the diversity at both organization's and collaborative network levels.

Fig. 1 -Collaborative processes invoking CES services in CN nodes

A main research hypothesis is to consider the adaptive computational component CES [START_REF] Osório | Open services ecosystem supporting collaborative networks[END_REF] as a key strategy to promote the openness of complex integrated systems. The elements of the suggested approach are detailed and discussed in the following sections. The IBS are designed under a collaborative business model perspective and supported by a set of collaborative business processes (CBP) [START_REF] Zhao | Tracking over collaborative business processes[END_REF] deployed and executed in the context of a collaborative network [START_REF] Osório | Towards a distributed process execution platform for collaborative networks[END_REF]. The collaboration enabled system (CES), is then introduced as the base executive component of an open framework and infrastructure for collaborative networks.

The Need for Collaboration-enabled Solutions

The challenge of developing open and integrated solutions for telematics domains such as the road tolling system, motivated the development of an open service bus, the ITSIBus [START_REF] Gomes | An open integration bus for efc: The its-ibus[END_REF], [START_REF] Osório | Open multi-technology service oriented architecture for its business models: The itsibus etoll services[END_REF] as a first solution. In the beginning of the Brisa's project the road tolling systems were closed to competing suppliers besides the initial one. The independence from this unique supplier was then achieved through the development of an open service infrastructure involving a service surrogate as an adapter to make transparent the specificities of the different protocols from different road side equipments (RSE), as illustrated in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2 -Adapter-based integration of systems from different suppliers

This approach followed a quite usual integration pattern, which avoids the need for changes in legacy systems. Nevertheless, this exogenous integration effort has the drawback of implying extra costs and operational risks considering that there is an additional computational system, in some cases involving also hardware. Moreover, the complexity of the aimed integrated collaborative solutions suggests novel approaches regarding the lower levels components (e.g. sensor, actuators to user interacting channels). While the concept of adapter or surrogate might coexist for the cases where the inclusion of legacy systems might be an advantage, a more promising approach is to develop a collaboration enabled systems framework as a unifying bridge between business requirements and technology. The idea is to introduce an abstract component language able to process requirements against standard reusable components. Such generic and adaptive computational component aims to contribute to an endogenous integration paradigm. By endogenous integration we understand the approach that promotes that each subsystem is, from its inception, developed for operation in a collaboration context. In Fig. 2 this idea is illustrated by the embedding a CES element into the Kapch and Q-free (the current Brisa's RSE suppliers) subsystems, making them collaboration-enabled, without the need for exogenous adapters. The strategy here was to promote the technological change without the need for extra costs from the Brisa's side.

The SINCRO project considers a central operations management unit (CGO) that will be responsible for the quality control of each speed limit enforcement event (a multimedia object with a picture, a timestamp and the measured speed). This CGO subsystem, managed by the national authority, will cooperate with other subsystems to process and validate enforcement events. The interaction with a system managed by the authority responsible for the vehicle registration is an example of such required collaboration among public organizations. Although a simplified scenario, this is an interesting case to illustrate the complexity of the integrated collaborative solutions. An initial question was how to develop the national network in different phases starting with the most dangerous road points and gradually adding new control zones. Without a definition of an open architecture the national authority could only state WHAT is required and it would be up to the tender winner to decide about the HOWs. The next question is how to promote the development of an open solution towards the reduction, if not the elimination, of market dependencies regarding the development, life cycle management and evolution of the planned complex collaborative solutions. Taking this scenario as example (similar to the tolling case) the main problems are:

• The existing speed enforcement systems are based on an integrated kinemometer (Doppler Radar or Laser), a camera and a controller typically implementing a proprietary protocol to access enforcement events (through TCP connection); • A cabinet system (or rack) has a specific design and development usually provided by the supplier of the radar or by an integrator; An equivalent CGO system is offered by the market, usually by suppliers of radar systems as an integrated solution to manage the national speed enforcement networks. In this case it might be incorrect to talk about integrated business services, since is more an enforcement on citizens. Nevertheless it is possible to consider the national authority as an integrated service provider in the sense that the citizen has gets a single contact to solve the enforcement events independently of the number of involved collaborating organizations. Please note that this case includes the participation of municipalities with their own speed enforcement infrastructures, police authorities as unique persons authorized to move radar systems among enforcement points, etc. Recently, these organizations have been trying to evolve to higher levels of collaboration but their heterogeneous IT solutions are a drawback to this process. A more ambitious vision, already under discussion, is to evolve to a pan-European collaborative network to manage traffic safety and other security issues, as part of a global strategy to a safer mobility in Europe. We might foresee a Portuguese citizen travelling through Europe to be contacted by a subscribed integrated service warning her/him about enforcement events generated along her/his is trip. We can also foresee some form of warning regarding the entrance into a driving environment with different rules.

The Concept of Collaboration Enabled System

The collaboration enabled system (CES) concept aims to contribute to a separation between the realization and the modeling of requirements [START_REF] Scheer | From business process model to application system" developing an information system with the house of business engineering (hobe)[END_REF]. The idea is thus to contribute to the consolidation of the model-driven development (MDD) approach [START_REF] Pastor | Model-driven development[END_REF], [START_REF] Winkler | A survey of traceability in requirements engineering and modeldriven development[END_REF] as an agile and adaptive mapping between requirements and execution components. The purpose is to promote a system's, rather than software development thinking. This proposed systems' thinking requires an effort to generalize the implementation perspective making subsystems adaptable to a diversity of requirements and able to support the derivation of new subsystems with the required capabilities. The CES concept aims to support such flexibility, making it possible for a components repository to support process development tools during technology bindings when executive resources are associated to process activities.

A iii. A contribution to make the management of complex collaborative solutions more agile and autonomous (dynamic adaptability to a network and systems management application/service).

o Given the growing diversity of systems, there is a need for a unified systems' management considering both monitoring and maintenance under a unique service level agreement. While this is not the main focus of this research, the adopted architecture establishes the basis for an adaptive and intelligent integrated monitoring and maintenance processes automation.

Definition: A Cooperation Enabled System (CES) is an autonomous computational entity, made of interrelated components, defined as a tuple: CES = <SA, I, S, M, E, R, B> where (Fig. 3):

• SA is a Self-Awareness subsystem embedding meta-data able to adapt the CES to a diversity of contexts; the SA subsystem manages CES capabilities;

• I is a set of Interfaces, considering an interface as a point of interaction or a cooperation point;

• S is the Security subsystem responsible for implementing the CES's security policies;

• M is the Monitoring subsystem aiming to implement the mechanisms making possible to plug the CES to an infrastructure management system (operational quality assurance);

• E is the Event management subsystem and it is responsible to support asynchronous interactions with CES clients;

• R represents the set of Resources necessary for the implementation behaviors. It might include configuration files, executable objects, user interface components among other resources to be used by the specialized behaviors;

• B embeds the business logic, implementing the modeled Behaviors that contribute to the declared capabilities. One important aspect of the proposed concept is the generalization of the implemented interfaces making it possible for a CES to adapt to a diversity of execution environments. For instance, the road side equipment (RSE) has autonomy to store vehicle identification events; when reestablishing the connection to the lane management service (LMS), there is a need for a potential exchange of a huge amount of stored data. One option is to provide a specialized file transfer protocol for a reliable transfer of such data. However, other functionalities can be available through web services of other inter-systems communication mechanism (FTP, RMI, .NET, etc.). The need to cope with scenarios involving multiple technologies also motivates the need to increase CES adaptability. According to the above definition, all the CES components can be organized as a collection of generic modeling entities (GME), Fig. 4. In the proposed framework a GME object aims to represent any kind of information from data, knowledge or behavior. In this way, both the run-time system and any CES can dynamically adapt for the cooperation with another CES.

Fig. 4 -The GME UML model

A GME instance is composed by exactly of one MetaData_MD and one DataObject_DO objects. The attribute ContentType identifies a known structure of the content. When the value is Unknown, there is a possibility to infer its type by analyzing the content based on previous knowledge of existing specifications. This feature might be addressed considering a confidence degree to the inferred content type and according to the decision policies the result is adopted or discarded. The idea is to support semantic evaluation for the cases information is lacking to unambiguously interpret GME objects.

Revisiting the Tolling Application Example

A road side equipment (RSE) reads vehicle electronic identification from an on-board unit (OBU). When plugged, the CES/RSE looks for a CES services directory (which might be also a CES) and registers its I 0 interface. A lane controller, also implemented as a CES, discovers the RSE and, through its I 0 interface, gets the necessary context information to retrieve vehicle identification events to be used in cooperation with other lane subsystems to generate electronic toll transactions. At the lane level, a typical electronic toll collection system has a lane controller that coordinates events generated by vehicle detection and classification and an enforcement subsystem. The lane controller logic is modeled by a process definition, Fig. 5. Some initialization process loads the LMS process definition to a CES space capable of interpreting process definition. The idea is to assume a CES as embedding a process virtual machine able to interpret declarative business logic definitions (e.g. a BPEL interpreter or execution engine). The proposed framework considers specialized system CES offering communication and coordination mechanisms for the entire solution. The cooperation enabling Tuple Space system (CES Tuple Space), Fig. 5, is responsible for the communication among CES. In the implemented system, this communication follows the Linda [START_REF] Ciancarini | Coordination languages for open system design[END_REF], [START_REF] Holvoet | Behaviour specification of active objects in open generative communication environments[END_REF] shared space paradigm. By using a tuple space service each CES has only a single interlocutor. A LMS subscribes events with a specific signature on the Tuple Space CES to access events from the RSE, AVDC or ALPR subsystems. A strategy like this simplifies the implementation of a CES considering it does not need to be aware of the location of the other cooperating CES. The CES proposal is grounded on the results from the adoption by Brisa of the ITSIBus service oriented (SOA) infrastructure [START_REF] Osório | Open multi-technology service oriented architecture for its business models: The itsibus etoll services[END_REF]. The adoption of some of the features proposed in CES like the service monitoring, has contribute to a reduction of the total cost of ownership (TCO) of the deployed technology. It has also contributed to make simple and more competitive de evolution for new services as the case of the recent deployment of a new self-service tolling lane type (eTOLL).

Revisiting the Speed Limit Enforcement Example

The SINCRO project has established an initial functional granularity based on three autonomous subsystems being modeled as CES services:

i. The central operations management (CGO), which is modeled according to a business process modeling basis. The executive CES interprets the process representing the CGO responsibilities; ii. The cabinet subsystem embeds a CES responsible for the management of the rack even when no radar subsystem is plugged in; iii. The radar subsystem is modeled as a CES and is responsible to deliver speed enforcement events to the CGO.

In a first approach, single network management protocol (SNMP), file transfer protocol (FTP) and web services technology have been adopted to promote the open interfaces for the planned subsystems. A management information base (MIB) for the cabinet and radar subsystems were already defined to support the monitoring perspective of each the subsystems. A reference implementation to validate the proposed interface and models is under development. The strategy is to maintain a pragmatic development, close to the potential suppliers' innovation capabilities and, at the same time, develop a theoretical thread able to rupture processes and technology patterns towards the adoption of the proposed adaptive CES. An eclipse plug-in is planned as a model drivel development (MDD) tool to manage the CES bindings to the business process activities.

Conclusions

The development of complex integrated collaborative IT solutions is an open and challenging task. Existing complex IT solutions are typically closed as they depend on a single responsibility (single provider). The ongoing development of a new generation of open electronic toll collection solution under a research project sponsored by Brisa company illustrates the existing problems. This research was motivated by the extension of the offered service to the payment in parking lots and gas stations and by the difficulties for the existence of a unique technology supplier (closed solution). The project is now evolving to the evaluation of the cooperation enabled system (CES) concept where an adaptive systems framework embedding service capabilities is being proposed. The main objective of the proposed CES framework is to support the technology bindings for process definitions independently of considering intra-organizational processes or collaborative processes (or cross-organizational processes. The purpose is to offer a model-driven approach to the development of IT solutions (process oriented developments). This means that suppliers are invited to develop their systems able to plug into compositions of systems leading, in this way, to open integrated solutions. The openness of such complex IT solutions is not an easy issue. The responsibility constraint related to the possibility of any subsystem being replaced by a competing one, requires further research. For less critical systems, the interoperability certification is a mechanism being developed to guarantee the replaceability of a subsystem by an equivalent one (from a competing supplier).

The proposed CES structure is also being validated in a governmental authority application for the development of a national speed limit enforcement network, the SINCRO project, promoted by the Portuguese National Authority for Road Security (ANSR).

Fig. 3 -

 3 Fig. 3 -The Collaboration Enabled System (CES) structure

Fig. 5 -

 5 Fig. 5 -The lane management service (LMS) architecture

Acknowledgements. This work was partially supported by BRISA Innovation and Technology, and Galpgeste companies and National Authority for Road Security (ANSR) through a research and development grant.


Raul Rodriguez-Rodriguez

Juan-Jose Alfaro-Saiz

Maria-Jose Verdecho
email: mverdecho@cigip.upv.es

A Review on Intellectual Capital Concepts as a Base for Measuring Intangible Assets of Collaborative Networks

Keywords: Intellectual capital, collaborative networks, measurement

This work presents a revision of the main definition and significances of the term Intellectual Capital, as it is an important issue of study. Once the main scientific works related to Intellectual Capital are presented and their main contributions highlighted, this work shows how it has been attempted to measure the Intellectual Capital at both individual enterprises and collaborative networks, as a source of meaningful information to make decisions. The paper evidences the lack of works that have successfully dealt with measuring Intellectual Capital at the collaborative networks level, highlighting the main barriers and what a proper measuring framework should address at this level.

Introduction

A company's capability to create value depends on its ability to implement strategies that respond to market opportunities by exploiting their internal resources and capabilities [START_REF] Penrose | The theory of the growth of the firm[END_REF]. Therefore, managers need to understand what the key internal resources and drivers of performance in their organisations are. Traditionally, those resources were physical, such as machines and equipments, and financial capital. In today's economy traditional tangible assets seem to become increasingly transient and rarely provide a long-term competitive advantage. This reflects the belief that intangibles assets are a fundamental resource of corporate growth and organizations need to put into work procedures for managing their intangible assets. In the last years, the concept of Intellectual Capital (IC) has emerged as a key to analyse and evaluate the intangible assets of organizations.

Literature Review

In the last two decades, several models have been developed for managing the IC. All of them attempt to identify, classify, measure and manage the company's IC. Some models are focused on the global IC of the company such as the Skandia Navigator [START_REF] Edvinsson | IC: the Proven Way to Establish Your Company's Real Value by Measuring Its Hidden Values[END_REF], the Intangible Assets Monitor [START_REF] Sveiby | The New Organizational Wealth: Managing & Measuring Knowledge-Based Assets[END_REF]. On the other hand, other frameworks are focused on the intangibles related to the defined strategies such as [START_REF]Guidelines for Managing and Reporting on Intangibles[END_REF] or the Intellectual Capital Management System. However, none of these models implement or suggest the integration within a performance measurement system, which would contribute the advantages of its use.

In the literature, the concept of IC has been defined from different management perspectives as shown in Table 1. For instance, accounts prefer to talk about intangibles and according to [START_REF]Intangible Assets, International Accounting Standards No. 38 revised[END_REF], define them as "non-financial fixed assets that do not have physical substance but are identifiable and controlled by the entity through custody and legal rights". From a human resource (HR) perspective, IC refers to skills, knowledge, and attitudes of employees. From a marketing perspective, intangibles such as brand recognition and customer satisfaction are at the heart of business success, whereas from at the information technology (IT) perspective, intangibles are seen as being software applications and network capabilities (for an indepth discussion of the different perspectives on IC please refer to [START_REF] Marr | Perspectives on IC: Multidisciplinary Insights into Management, Measurement, and Reporting[END_REF]). As shown by the above definitions, there is no agreement upon what constitutes a good or sufficient definition of IC. Finally, IC is an important theme in different disciplines and is looked at from different perspectives such as economics, strategic management, finance, accounting, reporting and disclosure, human resources, and marketing and communication. However, there are few works developed related to the IC in the field of performance measurement.

Definition [START_REF] Hall | The strategic analysis of intangible resources[END_REF] It is set up by intangible property and intangible resources. [START_REF] Edvinsson | Developing a model for managing intellectual capital[END_REF] It is knowledge that can be converted into value. [START_REF] Brooking | IC: Core Assets for the Third Millennium Enterprise[END_REF] It is the result of four main components, which are the market assets, human-centred assets, intellectual property assets and infrastructure assets.

[3] It is related to three categories of intangible assets: internal structure, external structure and human competence. [START_REF] Roos | IC: Navigating the New Business Landscape[END_REF] It is composed of (and generated by) a thinking part, i.e. the human capital, and a non-thinking part, i.e. the structural capital. [START_REF] Stewart | IC: The New Wealth of Organisations[END_REF] It is an intellectual material that has been formalised, captured and leveraged to produce a higher-valued asset. [START_REF] Edvinsson | IC: the Proven Way to Establish Your Company's Real Value by Measuring Its Hidden Values[END_REF] It is the sum of human and structural capital. In more detail it involves applied experience, organizational technology, customer relationships and professional skills that provide an organization with a competitive advantage in the market. [START_REF] Bontis | The knowledge toolbox: a review of the tools available to measure and manage intangible resources[END_REF] It is a concept under which are classified all organization intangible resources as well their interconnections

The Intellectual Capital Management Models are focused on the establishment of one definition of IC, the components or dimensions of its structure, the intangible assets that belong to each component or dimension, and the indicator used to measure the identified intangible assets. Some models, as result of their activities, elaborate one report with two proposals, one as internal management tool and the second as external spreading tool of information for informing to the stakeholders about the real value of the company and not only about its financial value. Only some of the recently developed models of IC identify the need of linking the intangible assets with the strategy of the company, such as [START_REF]Guidelines for Managing and Reporting on Intangibles[END_REF]. Such a project was the first model that proposed the identification of the strategic objectives of the company and the critical intangible assets related to each of these strategic objectives as one of the main steps of this project. Moreover, the RICARDA project establishes that the first step to create a report of Intellectual Capital for Regional Networks o Clusters is the definition of the regional network or cluster's objectives in medium and long term and the second step is concerning to the identification of each intangible assets that affect them.

Measuring Intellectual Capital

Enterprise Level

Nowadays, IC has become a determinant resource for enterprise to retain and improve competitive advantages. Because of its abstract nature, the IC is very difficult to measure, having become a challenge for business managers to evaluate the performance of IC effectively.

[13] identified as benefits of IC measurement firstly the identification and mapping of intangible assets, which allows the company knowing its resources of competitive advantages on the future. Secondly, the recognition of knowledge flow patterns within the company. The last two benefits drive to the prioritization of critical knowledge issues, which allow the acceleration of learning patterns within the company thanks to the best practice identification and diffusion across the company, by presenting a strong business case for the best practice. Besides, the measurement of the IC permits a constant monitoring of asset value as well as to find ways of increasing the value of the company and the understanding of how knowledge creates interrelationships and increases innovation. From the point of view of the employees, the benefits are with regard to the increasing of collaborative activities and a knowledge sharing culture as a result of increased awareness of the benefits of knowledge management. Also the employee self-perception of the organization and their motivation are increased. Finally, it creates a performance-oriented culture.

Measurement of IC will result in significant benefits to the organization that will help to determine business strategy, process design as well providing competitive advantage Additionally, [START_REF] Bontis | The knowledge toolbox: a review of the tools available to measure and manage intangible resources[END_REF] carried out an exhaustive literature review in which he highlighted the following main limitations in the existing measurement systems:

-The existing approaches relate to the organization as a whole and do not account for individual departments or knowledge workers.

-They do not balance past-orientation with future predictions, or quantitative financial measures with qualitative perceptual and process measures.

-Behavioural dynamics and its impact on organizational economics are not measured.

-There is no system for measuring process effectiveness in capturing tacit knowledge transfer.

At present, measuring a company's Intellectual Capital is quite common. According to Nordic survey, two thirds of Finnish companies measure their Intellectual Capital regularly. Despite the fact that measuring Intellectual Capital is considered important, only 35 percent of the companies know how Intellectual Capital should be measured and reported [START_REF]Measuring and Reporting IC: Experiences, Issues, and Prospects[END_REF]. Although different measurement systems for measuring Intellectual Capital have been developed, none of them has been accepted for common use. According to [START_REF] Sveiby | The New Organizational Wealth: Managing & Measuring Knowledge-Based Assets[END_REF] the approaches for measuring intellectual capital fall into four categories: Direct Intellectual Capital Methods (DIC), Market Capitalization Methods (MCM), Return on Assets Methods (ROA) and Scorecard Methods (SC). The methods offer different advantages and disadvantages. Scorecard Methods in particular have been developed as a tool for management and although all the scorecard methods have many similarities, they can be categorized into two different types: the (traditional) balanced performance measurement methods and Intellectual Capital measurement methods. The balanced performance measurement frameworks, e.g. the Balanced Scorecard [START_REF] Kaplan | The Balanced Scorecard -Measures that Drive Performance[END_REF] and the Performance Pyramid [START_REF] Lynch | Measure Up! The Essential Guide to Measuring Business Performance[END_REF], have been developed for measuring and managing an organization's performance from several perspectives. IC is often related to one or more of these perspectives. However, in the IC measurement methods, e.g. the Skandia Navigator [START_REF] Edvinsson | IC: the Proven Way to Establish Your Company's Real Value by Measuring Its Hidden Values[END_REF] and the Intangible Assets Monitor [START_REF] Sveiby | The New Organizational Wealth: Managing & Measuring Knowledge-Based Assets[END_REF], the main rationale is the measurement of IC. Financial and other physical assets are not paid as much attention as the Intellectual-Capital-related factors.

Kaplan y Norton [START_REF] Kaplan | Measuring the Strategic Readiness of Intangible Assets[END_REF] indicated that the intangible assets are hard for competitors to imitate, which makes them a powerful source of sustainable competitive advantage. The Learning and Growth Perspective of the Balances Scorecard has long been considered its weakest link, and Kaplan and Norton admitted it . To improve this the authors included in this perspective the intangibles assets essentials for implementing any strategy, which are classified in three categories: Human Capital (the skills, talent and knowledge that a company's employees possess), Information Capital (the company's database, information systems, networks and technology infrastructure) and Organizational Capital (the company's culture, its leadership, how aligned its people are with its strategic goals and employee's ability to share knowledge). Additionally, and to link these intangible assets to the company's strategy and performance, these authors developed a tool called "strategic map".

Although the terminology used to describe and categorize intangible assets is far from being cohesive at the detailed level, there has recently been a general convergence towards a three-pronged framework consisting of Human Capital, Organizational (or Structural) Capital and Relational Capital [START_REF]Guidelines for Managing and Reporting on Intangibles[END_REF]. Therefore, it is not clear why Information Capital is considered by Kaplan and Norton separated from Organizational Capital as most of the researches on this field agree.

As well, the concept of Relational Capital is completely missing from Kaplan and Norton's definition of intangible assets. The Balanced Scorecard includes a Customer Perspective and it could be argued that customer relationships could be included into this perspective. In fact, Kaplan and Norton [START_REF] Kaplan | Measuring the Strategic Readiness of Intangible Assets[END_REF] argue that this perspective should contain the customer value proposition. Even if relationships might be included the issue remains that according to Kaplan and Norton's definition of intangibles assets, Relational Capital is not included, which defies the views of most researchers working in this field.

At this point, several gaps have been identified in the above literature review such as the lack of consensus among the researchers and the practitioners about the definitions of IC, the IC components and the IC indicators. Many and various have been the attempts to measure the intangible assets of the companies through different IC models. Kaplan and Norton, instead of creating a new model to measure the intangible assets, have integrated the measurement of the intangible assets within their Balanced Scorecard. Several researchers have criticized this attempt, having being identified several gaps in the way they have done such a merge.

Collaborative Network Level

On the other hand, and looking at the collaborative networks ambit, all these research gaps are present, among others. Collaboration implies factors such as trust, equity, coherence, visibility, contradictory objectives, or communication issues that are beyond the individual enterprise's problems [START_REF] Alfaro Saiz | An information architecture for a performance management framework by collaborating SMEs[END_REF]. This fact makes much more difficult to measure performance of collaborative networks from both a tangible and intangible point of view. Measuring intellectual capital is still in its early steps, as highlighted above and, at the collaborative ambit, even more. Some authors have recently dealt with the issue of measuring performance at collaborative contexts [START_REF] Alfaro Saiz | An information architecture for a performance management framework by collaborating SMEs[END_REF][START_REF] Busi | Collaborative performance management: present gaps and future research[END_REF][START_REF] Angerhofer | A model and a performance measurement system for collaborative supply chains[END_REF][START_REF] Gaiardelli | Performance measurement of the after-sales service network -Evidence from the automotive industry[END_REF][START_REF] Gruat | A Framework to analyse Collaborative Performance[END_REF]. However, none of these works have deeply stated how to measure IC at collaborative networks levels. However, by bringing up the main conclusions together, it is possible to affirm that it is still lacked a method that should:

-Establish the linkage between the tangible and the intangible assets of the CN. This is such a difficult task but it needs to be done in order that CN decisionmakers will be able to clearly know to what extent the achievement of a certain degree of IC within the CN is impacting over the fulfillment of the CN's strategic objectives. This could be done by applying either subjective (surveys, Multi-Criteria Decision-Aid Techniques) or objective techniques (statistical techniques analyzing historical data from the CN). -Consider the specific requirements of IC in CN as compared to individual enterprises. Nowadays, individual enterprises take part in several supply chains/CNs and, therefore, it is very likely that some of these CNs will have contradictory objectives. Then, the decision-making mechanisms of each individual enterprise are internal and not known to a single CN. Such a lack of knowledge of how the individual enterprise is going to decide can be a serious barrier. Besides, contradictory objectives will lead to discussions within the CN and ways that will lead to consensus should be waved. Some collaborative factors have been mentioned above and these are of particular relevance to CN. How to deal with them in different scenarios and regarding IC is still lacked. -From the last one, it would be desirable to find out to what extent are linked together both different IC intensity degrees and the achievement of one or more important collaborative factors. For instance, to study how different levels of IC in two enterprises of a CN affects to their cycles of trust-distrust.

To sum up, it is possible to affirm that, as result of the analysis of the identified gaps on the measurement of the intangible assets, a new approach is necessary at both the individual enterprise and the collaborative network context with the aim of improving this research field.

Conclusions

Recently, the thematic of Intellectual Capital has emerged as a key issue to analyse and evaluate the intangible assets of organizations. Both practitioners and academics agree on the fact that before to measure Intellectual Capital, it is necessary to find a common definition of what Intellectual Capital is. Then, this paper firstly presents the main Intellectual Capital definitions. Then, it highlights the main advantages of measuring Intellectual Capital in organisations and, extensively, in collaborative networks, concluding that there is still a huge research field to be filled in on this area.

Table 1 .

 1 Main definitions of Intellectual Capital.


Ronald C Beckett

Michael Jones
email: mjones@uow.edu.au

Active Ageing: Using an ARCON Framework to Study U3A (University of the Third Age) in Australia

Keywords: Active Ageing, Collaborative Networks, ARCON, U3A, Volunteering

There are more than 200 U3A groups in Australia where senior citizens collaborate to provide recreational learning opportunities to more than 60,000 other senior citizens. The movement continues to grow through the efforts of thousands of volunteers with very limited government support. We chose to use a collaborative network organisation modelling framework, ARCON, to both guide questions we asked in our research and to represent data from different instances in a consistent way. This provided a coherent view of the status quo, but supplementary questions were needed to consider the future viability of U3A groups. Spinoff network activities associated with some U3A groups were noted, suggesting the U3A model might be adapted for a variety of purposes. In such cases, it is hoped that the structured view provided by the ARCON framework might inform their design.

Introduction

Many governments are supporting notions of active ageing in both the physical and intellectual sense to keep older members of the population healthy and stimulated. Individual intellectual stimulation may come from problem-solving, game-playing and lifelong learning. Community benefits [START_REF] Healy | The Benefits of an Ageing Population The Australia Institute[END_REF] can be realised by accessing the collective experience of this older demographic, known as of the Third Age population, and providing stimulating learning opportunities [START_REF] Clarke | Hopes, fears and expectations about the future: what do older people's stories tell us about active ageing[END_REF]. In Australia, the primary government focus is on physical wellbeing, but large numbers of people (around 60,000) are engaged in local learning activities embracing an international initiative known as the University of the Third Age (U3A). These U3As operate with minimal, if any resources, yet they still achieve their stated goals. A question thus arises: how do they do it? Can an operating model be discerned? A recognised framework -ARCON -is used to characterise the U3A operations. This research extends a coherent understanding of how this arrangement works. We aim to see if the U3A example provides a substantive model for extension into other initiatives.

Background on the University of the Third Age (U3A)

The University of the Third Age (U3A) began in 1973 when Professor Pierre Vellas organized a summer program for retired persons at the Universite des Sciences Socialies, Toulouse, France. The French model centred on a weekly public lecture on a major topic of concern for older persons. Supporting these were discussion groups, seminars, and recreational facilities, each taking advantage of the university facilities. Since 1973, the U3A concept has been implemented in many countries around the world [10]. China has the largest group. In 2002 there were reported to be 19,300 U3As and 1.81 million members [START_REF] Swindell | In publication) Successful Ageing and International Approaches to Later Life Learning 15[END_REF]. Some countries have followed the French model. Others, including Australian U3A's, have followed a model that Midwinter [START_REF] Midwinter | The University of the Third Age in Britain[END_REF] calls Tutorial Cooperatives of the Elderly. This latter derivative emerged in the UK in 1981 with 20 U3A's having 2,500 members being established in the first year. In this model, 'university' is given its original and intended meaning "… of people coming together to share and pursue learning in all its forms" [START_REF]U3A Trust[END_REF]. The British model was first adapted by Peter Laslett -an academic from Cambridge University [15]. In 1981 he wrote the objects and principles of the British U3A [16]:

The pleasure of learning is a driving force in the work of U3As. U3As neither require nor award any qualifications. By sharing their learning, U3A members help one another to develop their knowledge, skills and experience. U3As arrange and support their own programmes as appropriate to their chosen learning activities. U3A members regard themselves as both learners and teachers.

The Research Approach

Data were collected from interviews with some Australian U3A group leaders and from web pages plus some site visits. One Australian researcher, Rick Swindell [START_REF] Swindell | In publication) Successful Ageing and International Approaches to Later Life Learning 15[END_REF], has been engaged with Australian U3A initiatives for around twenty years. We have been able to draw heavily on his documented work and on interactions with him.

We have used a collaborative organisation model framework (ARCON) that emerged from a large European study [START_REF] Camarinha-Matos | ECOLEAD: A holostic approach to creation and management of virtual organizations[END_REF][START_REF] Camarinha-Matos | ARCON reference models for collaborative networks[END_REF] to try and characterise the U3As in Australia. The ARCON framework assumes that both internal and external interactions influence the operation of a Collaborative Network Organisation (CNO). Each of these is characterised at three levels of detail as follows:

• Internal (endogenous) elements having structural (who is involved and how), componential (tangible/intangible assets utilized), functional (processes and procedures) and behavioural (governance rules and values) dimensions. Each of these dimensions has four subsidiary categories: the active entity, passive entities, action and concepts. • External (exogenous) elements having market (who are the customers or potential beneficiaries), support (services provided by third parties), societal (the broader community) and constituency (potential new participants and supporters) dimensions. Each of these dimensions has three subsidiary categories: network identity, interaction parties and interaction types We developed four top-level questions related to each part of the model, with subsidiary questions stimulating discussion of further detail, again based on the model. These questions were:

How 4 About U3A in Australia Australia adopted the British model, opening first in Melbourne in 1984, and then expanding throughout Australia. There are now over 211 U3A groups in Australia with 64,535 members [START_REF] Swindell | U3As in Australia and New Zealand[END_REF]. According to a review by Swindell et al [START_REF] Swindell | Characteristics and Aspirations of older learners in an Australian University of the Third Age Program: Part 1 -Survey Results[END_REF], the U3A groups in Australia range in size from a low of 24 members to a high of 5500 members (Sydney U3A). Nine groups have more than 1000 members. The median U3A Australian membership is 414. Australian U3As do not appear to limit membership numbers. The number of males participating has increased in recent years. The female/male ratio is now about 3:1. Providing intellectually stimulating opportunities and social networking are seen as the two major accomplishments of U3As. There is reported to be strong support for continuation of a laissez faire approach to teaching and learning in which course leaders come from any walk in life and teach in their preferred style. There was little enthusiasm for academic courses. Teaching takes place in any suitable community venue like rented premises, free or subsidized community facilities or private homes. Favoured ways of maintaining course quality were feedback from participants and "market forces".

4.1

The Local U3A Groups Local U3A groups are set up as self-standing entities, generally registered as unincorporated not-for-profit associations with a volunteer governing board and administrative staff. Most office bearers have a professional or business background. Volunteers may be teachers on one occasion and learners on another, but the focus is on sharing knowledge. Drawing on experience gained over many years, course delivery is commonly via a series of two-hour face-to-face sessions. Teaching facilities may be provided by other charitable organisations or by local government. Some U3As ask members to commit to a few hours of voluntary work each month on joining. One large U3A (ACT) reported attracting a healthy flow of recent retirees as well as retaining a relatively high proportion of old members. One quarter of its 3700 members were aged 65 or less; 14% were aged 80 and older. The success or failure of a U3A group is strongly related to the skills and energy of its leadership [START_REF] Swindell | U3As in Australia and New Zealand[END_REF].

Our interviews suggested that whilst many seniors groups tend towards the social rather than the intellectual needs of older people, U3A attracts people who want more and who in many instances can give more, because of their past experience as teachers, lecturers, historians, lawyers etc, as well as other walks of life. Its members have an enthusiasm for lifelong learning, and can share experience and knowledge as well as learn new things themselves. ----Put simply, U3A is an educational movement, not just a senior's organization (a regional U3A leader). A scan of contact data of 160 local groups in two States indicated about 60% of U3A groups maintain a website. Swindell et al [START_REF] Swindell | U3As in Australia and New Zealand[END_REF] report the following: more than a third of U3As use the Internet as a teaching/learning resource.

Regional Coordination Groups

The largest regional group, U3A Network Victoria, represents 97 U3As having about 25,000 members. It is recognized by the Adult, Community and Further Education Board of Victoria as an education Peak Body. This makes it eligible for some funding consideration. Such funds are used to help engage a small number of paid employees.

Governance is through a council of nominated representatives from members and an elected executive committee. Further sub-committees are instituted in the areas of finance, publicity and promotion. Its role is to promote the U3A movement, fostering the creation of new U3As and the further development of existing U3As; serving as a reference body, acting as a central resource facility, providing publicity, promotion and profile to the general public and to government and other public bodies.

Information is disseminated through a Quarterly newsletter, a website and meetings of member representatives. The newsletter also presents opportunities available across local groups, such as special interest study tours.

U3A on Line

The Following observations have been provided by Rick Swindell [START_REF] Swindell | In publication) Successful Ageing and International Approaches to Later Life Learning 15[END_REF]: U3A Online, was set up in 1998 with a global focus from the outset. The administration and teaching in U3A Online is carried out by about 100 volunteers. Governance and administration occurs through regular virtual meetings. Discussion and voting takes place by electronic forum, email and Skype. It is commonplace for the majority of volunteers to work closely together for many years but never physically meet.

Since 2002, Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia has hosted the entire operation free of charge on university servers, as part of its service to the wider community. In 2011 39 courses were available to U3A Online members with others in various stages of completion. For an additional fee, a further 13 courses are available to members through a cooperative arrangement with the Third Age Trust in the UK, which has provided online courses for its UK members since 2000. Depending on the availability of volunteer tutors, members may opt to pay an additional fee to join tutor-led discussions, during which participants interact with the leader and with others in the course by online forum and email. Site licenses are an additional service available to any U3A-style organization in any country. The course notes have all been written and illustrated by expert volunteers in their fields and in some cases these run to more than 100 pages when printed. All courses and resources are in English. In 2008, about 35% of Australian U3As were using on-line courses.

Discussion

We now consider the characteristics of the U3As studied in relation to attributes of the ARCON reference framework. The on-line and local Australian U3As are coalitions of individuals with a common interest in learning. They regard themselves as both learners and teachers with an emphasis on collaboration. In the ARCON framework this extent of collaboration impliescommunication & exchange for mutual benefit plus a complementarity of goals -aligning activities for mutual benefit, plus compatible goals with individuals working apart (with some coordination) plus having joint goals, joint identities and joint responsibilities (creating together) and (participant) teams. This describes U3A working arrangements quite well. The regional U3A's are coalitions of organisations that deliver services with an emphasis on cooperation.

In the ARCON model, this impliescommunication & exchange for mutual benefit plus a complementarity of goals -aligning activities for mutual benefit, plus compatible goals with individuals working apart (with some coordination).

Again a good description. The common themes are communications, exchange for mutual benefit and complementarity of goals. The primary communication tools are newsletters and word-of-mouth, but internet use is increasing. U3As are long-term strategic networks consistent with the ARCON definition of a professional virtual community: is an alliance of professional individuals, and provides an environment to facilitate the agile and fluid formation of virtual teams. This describes the local U3A arrangements for establishing and running courses quite well. Virtual teams are established at the regional level for a variety of purposes.

The ARCON framework requirements for collaboration include a number of things.

A clear purpose -This is well enunciated in the British U3A model that is incorporated in the individual Australian U3A formation documents, as are some basic requirements like processes for defining structures and policies. At the personal level, the primary interest is in recreational learning (as compared with vocational learning). However, some individuals participate in courses for a specific purpose, such as learning a language prior to visiting a foreign country or learning about IT to be able to use e-commerce or to communicate with grandchildren. One of the preconditions for collaboration in the ARCON model is that parties must know each other's competencies. In the U3A case, this seems to have been established by social networking prior to formation and subsequently during operation as people volunteer to undertake different tasks. Another ARCON requirement is for a collaboration space. For most U3As this is a physical space, but both the U3A NSW regional group and the on-line U3A group seem to function quite well in a virtual space. Other ARCON requirements are concerned with ownership and sharing of resources and of equitable distributions of commitments and rewards. The U3As own almost no resources except for modest member funds, as they hire facilities or have them provided by external supporters. Most of the work is done by volunteers, where doing a job well is its own reward. However Mitchell et al [START_REF] Mitchell | Membership of University of the Third Age and perceived well-being[END_REF] reported other benefits from a survey of 975 members -that members of U3A had better-than-average general, physical and mental health, and that membership of U3A can, even in the very elderly, assist in conferring a much more positive perception of well-being.

The ARCON framework provides a tructural view that helps us understand how Australian U3As work, but not why they are sustainable or why they continue to grow. It has been observed that the individual U3As value their independence. A survey of 122 U3As [START_REF] Swindell | U3As in Australia and New Zealand[END_REF] reported that most would prefer to decline external assistance due to potential loss of autonomy (60%), increased bureaucracy (30%) and contrary to self-help ethos (25%). Important considerations for the immediate future were seen as maintaining or increasing membership, offering a wider range of courses, and seeking more permanent accommodation. When asked about the longerterm future, the most strongly supported suggestions were: 1) technical demands on the Third Age population will increase, 2) there is an expectation that retirees will need to do more to support themselves, and 3) a national communication network will assist local U3As to better meet the needs of a changing society. Anecdotal evidence also suggests that U3As need to become far more professional and organised to attract baby boomers or they could slip into quiescence.

Most data used in developing the ARCON framework related to collaboration between a modest number of enterprises, whereas the power behind the U3A network comes from a large number of individual volunteers. 60,000+ participants in Australia might sound like a lot but it represents only 0.85% of the total demographic group that could potentially participate, suggesting that these people have something special that drives them. It is suggested that this is an attribute of all successful collaborative network organizations -there is something special about the core participants.

We wanted to explore U3A operations as a potential model for other activities. Along the way, some spinoff activities were identified, suggesting this is a practical proposition. Timewitnesses [12] is an example of the Internet opening up cooperative ventures for U3A members around the world. Timewitnesses is a "living archive" which allows people from any country who have childhood or adult memories of World War II, to preserve their stories for everyone. Many of the stories have been translated into German and French and in a number of cases school children assisted with the translations. [12] U3A Online has sponsored a number of research/development studies of U3A operations that have been carried out in association with appropriately trained member researchers. The fundamental strength of the constituency research approach is that it entails research "with" rather than research "on" older people. The difference between "with" and "on" may not matter too much in large scale tick-abox surveys. However, if much richer findings are needed, these are more likely to arise from interviews carried out by peers who are perceived to have primary empathy with the participants, rather than by younger researchers whose appearance, manner of dress, language, general persona, and time constraints may create barriers to in-depth communication [START_REF] Mayhew | Some Pleasures and Pitfalls of Working with Older Research Assistants[END_REF]. "A voice worth listening to" is an example of a novel constituency research project undertaken exclusively by third agers. In this project a retired journalist visited and interviewed people aged 80 and older in Australia and New Zealand who were continuing to do remarkable things within their communities. The purpose of the research was to debunk the ageist and damaging mindset that advanced chronological age inevitably implies that an older person has become a burden on society. The lead researcher was in her mid 70s.

Concluding Remarks

This paper makes two contributions to the literature. Firstly, it describes an instance of a self-supporting active ageing network driven by users for users. Secondly, it explores the utility of a collaborative network model, ARCON, in helping to understand the characteristics of the case study network.

U3As in Australia are formed by groups of individuals in local communities, not organisations like many collaborative network organisations. They want a stimulating, participative recreational learning network for seniors, not a senior's social network that may provide learning. Both conventional and on-line learning modes are available. The focus is on long-term collaboration. Whilst each group operates as a separate entity, most choose to contribute to a regional virtual or physical office to cooperate in acquiring services as a group, sharing information on courses, interacting with governments and facilitating membership growth. Some coherent structures are provided in that each local group is formally constituted, generally as a not-for-profit unincorporated association, and its constitution includes common foundation principles from a British model. Some spin-off activities that contribute to the broader community were also observed, indicating the practicality of alternative applications of the U3A model, which is similar to a professional virtual community arrangement.

The ARCON framework provided a good foundation for checking that the right questions were asked about the extent and style of collaboration in the research phase and for positioning U3A operations in the very broad spectrum of Collaborative Network Organisation possibilities during analysis. It was found however that supplementary questions about the future directions and possible risks to U3A sustainability were needed in the case of this long-term collaboration. Parallel consideration of human factors (individual actor attitudes and contributions) linked to literature on volunteering was also necessary. The real U3A drivers are the thousands of volunteer administrators and tutors who share their time and knowledge in an environment where these contributions are valued. It is reported that both this group and the student group experience increased self-esteem and feelings of wellbeing.

There is some evidence that networking within and between U3As can provide a foundation for knowledge capture and research activities. There is also anecdotal evidence of entrepreneurial behaviour in establishing courses and marketing a U3A that will be the subject of a follow-on study.