Adegboyega Ojo

Tomasz Janowski

Elsa Estevez

Building Theoretical Foundations for Electronic Governance Benchmarking

Keywords: Electronic Governance, Benchmarking, Activity Theory

The success of the electronic governance (EGOV) benchmarking has been limited so far. Lacking a theory to integrate existing conceptualizations has made the acquisition and sharing of knowledge produced by different benchmarking exercises difficult. In order to address this problem, this paper: 1) explains the nature of the EGOV benchmarking activity though a wellestablished theoretical framework -Activity Theory, 2) applies the framework to carry out a mapping between a number of existing EGOV benchmarking conceptualizations, 3) develops an unified conceptualization based on these mappings and 4) validates the resulting model though a real-life national EGOV strategy development project. The use of the Activity Theory in the paper has enabled defining and relating initial dimensions of the EGOV benchmarking activity, and mapping the dimensions present in existing conceptualizations. This not only created a unifying theoretical basis for conceptualizing the EGOV benchmarking activity but allowed learning from and integrating existing conceptualizations. The work impacts on the EGOV benchmarking practice by enabling a logical design of the activity, and contextually correct understanding of existing EGOV benchmarking results with respect to their intended usage.

Introduction

Since it was introduced by Xerox Corporation over two decades ago [START_REF] Ammons | A Proper Mentality for Benchmarking[END_REF] [START_REF] Dorsch | A Framework for Benchmarking in the Public Sector Future Research[END_REF], benchmarking has become a well established tool for improving organizational performance and competitiveness particularly in the private sector. With increasing focus on performance management and continuous improvement in government, benchmarking has been also accepted as a useful management instrument in the public sector [START_REF] Jansen | The Contextual Benchmark Method: Benchmarking e-Government Services[END_REF]. In particular, the international benchmarking series like the United Nations e-Government Survey, Accenture e-Government survey or the European Union e-Government Study are well known in the EGOV domain [START_REF]The User Challenge Benchmarking -The Supply of Online Public Services[END_REF][8] [START_REF] Muller | Understanding the Success of Strategic IT / IS Benchmarking: Results from a Multiple-Case Study[END_REF].

The concept of benchmarking has received various definitions. For instance, [START_REF] Janssen | Measuring and Benchmarking the Back-End of E-Government. A Participative Self-Assessment Approach[END_REF] refers to the process of evaluating and applying best practices in order to improve performance while [START_REF]IANIS: Guide to Regional Good Practice Indicators and Benchmarking[END_REF], in the EGOV context, defines benchmarking as a systematic comparison of the performance of (parts of) organizations and their similar services, processes and routines, based on predetermined indicators, with the goal of improving performance by learning from one another. As a concept, benchmarking has evolved significantly over the years. Today, competitive, process, strategic and network benchmarking are all carried out in private and public sectors, and at the international, regional and national levels [START_REF] Janssen | Measuring and Benchmarking the Back-End of E-Government. A Participative Self-Assessment Approach[END_REF][18] [START_REF] Ojo | Determining Progress towards e-Government: What Are the Core Indicators?[END_REF], with contemporary practice shifting from model learning (i.e. learning what) towards process learning (i.e. learning how) and adaptive learning (i.e. learning to change) [START_REF] Janssen | Measuring and Benchmarking the Back-End of E-Government. A Participative Self-Assessment Approach[END_REF]. For any organization involved in the benchmarking exercise, the final pragmatic goal is identifying learning points and understanding how what has been learnt could make the organization better [START_REF] Ammons | A Proper Mentality for Benchmarking[END_REF].

As a research domain, benchmarking research is fairly mature. For instance in 2002 there were over 350 publications on benchmarking, shared between foundations (46%) and applications (43%) [START_REF] Dattakumar | A Review of Literature on Benchmarking[END_REF]. In February 2011, the authors' search in the Scopus database (www.scopus.com) of the articles with "benchmarking" in the title resulted in over 4000 publications and a dedicated journal: Benchmarking -An International Journal. Despite this, [START_REF] Bannister | The Curse of the Benchmark: An Assessment of the Validity and Value of e-Government Comparisons[END_REF] notes the scarcity of literature devoted to the conceptual and practical problems of EGOV benchmarking. Indeed, the Scopus database search produced only 40 publications in this area, congruent with the finding by Yasin [START_REF] Sharfman | Conceptualizing and Measuring the Organizational Environment: A Multidimensional Approach[END_REF] that only 1.8% of the benchmarking literature is associated with the public sector.

The need for a better theoretical and conceptual foundation for benchmarking in general and for EGOV benchmarking in particular were pointed out in [START_REF] Dorsch | A Framework for Benchmarking in the Public Sector Future Research[END_REF][17] [START_REF] Mcgonagle | Option in Benchmarking[END_REF]. Specifically, [START_REF] Sharfman | Conceptualizing and Measuring the Organizational Environment: A Multidimensional Approach[END_REF] asserted in 2002 that the academic community was lagging in developing models and frameworks that integrate many aspects of organizational benchmarking. Since then, efforts aimed at providing the required conceptual foundations have been documented in [START_REF] Bannister | The Curse of the Benchmark: An Assessment of the Validity and Value of e-Government Comparisons[END_REF][8] [START_REF] Engeström | The Future of Activity Theory: A Rough Draft[END_REF][15], albeit using different terminologies and levels of abstraction. The resulting conceptual multiplicity makes the integration of research findings associated with different conceptualizations difficult, and leaves the need for more theory development unresolved [START_REF] Kyrö | Revising the Concept and Forms of Benchmarking[END_REF].

Many of the reported issues relating to the EGOV benchmarking practice are arguably caused by a mismatch between the original purpose and subsequent use of the benchmarking results [START_REF] O'leary | Enterprise Ontologies: Review and an Activity Theory Approach[END_REF]. For instance, it is common for EGOV benchmarking series to rank countries in very different ways. In order for governments to learn from and exploit these differences, they must understand how the goals, scope, measures, etc. used by different series are related, how to correctly and meaningfully interpret and reason about different benchmark data with respect to specific exploitation goals, e.g. to inform EGOV strategy formation for better EGOV global positioning.

To address the problem above, this paper applied Activity Theory [START_REF] Almeida | Simpler, Better, Faster, Cheaper, Contextual: Requirements Analysis for a Methodological Approach to Interaction Systems Development[END_REF] as a unifying framework. A tool for better understanding human activities taking place within social and organizational contexts, Activity Theory has been widely used in learning, organizational analysis, design of interactive systems, enterprise engineering and others [START_REF] Almeida | Simpler, Better, Faster, Cheaper, Contextual: Requirements Analysis for a Methodological Approach to Interaction Systems Development[END_REF][23] [START_REF] Salem | Benchmarking the e-Government Bulldozer: Beyond Measuring the Tread Marks[END_REF]. As EGOV benchmarking is an activity situated within the government context, carried out by policy makers, strategists and researchers to achieve certain learning-oriented outcomes, it is intuitively amenable to Activity Theory-based analysis. Indeed, [START_REF] Nardi | Action Models, and Distributed Cognition[END_REF] shows how Activity Theory can be applied as a mapping and integrative framework for enterprise ontologies. Here, Activity Theory is used to align existing conceptualizations of EGOV benchmarking, and to integrate them into a unified conceptualization which, well-grounded in theory, enables specification and analysis of EGOV benchmarking. The paper also shows how this unifying conceptualization was build and applied in analyzing a concrete benchmarking activity within a real-life national EGOV strategy project.

Our contributions to EGOV benchmarking research and practice are as follows: 1) providing a theory-based unifying model which identifies and relates the core dimensions of the "EGOV benchmarking" concept, and 2) enabling detailed design of the EGOV benchmarking activity as well as detailed profiling of existing EGOV benchmarking initiatives to guide the use of their associated results.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 provides an overview and analysis of existing EGOV benchmarking conceptualizations. Section 3 presents the methodology adopted to guide this research, followed by the presentation of Action Theory as adopted theoretical framework in Section 4. The Activity Theory-based benchmarking model and the process of mapping and integrating existing conceptualizations using this model, resulting in the unified EGOV benchmarking conceptualization, is described in Section 5. Section 6 validates this conceptualization though a real-life national EGOV strategy project, Section 7 discusses the findings of the paper, and Section 8 provides some conclusions.

Related Work

This section provides an overview and discussion of eight EGOV benchmarking conceptualizations. Section 2.1 presents five research-oriented conceptualizations, followed by three practice-oriented conceptualizations in Section 2.2, and some observations about these conceptualizations in Section 2.3.

Research-Oriented Conceptualizations

Among the research-oriented conceptualization presented below, [17][25] were published in measurement-related journals, [START_REF] Bannister | The Curse of the Benchmark: An Assessment of the Validity and Value of e-Government Comparisons[END_REF] in a public administration journal and [8][15] in EGOV journals. Among them [3][8][15] [START_REF] O'leary | Enterprise Ontologies: Review and an Activity Theory Approach[END_REF] address EGOV benchmarking, while [START_REF] Janssen | Measuring and Benchmarking the Back-End of E-Government. A Participative Self-Assessment Approach[END_REF] addresses general benchmarking. Kyro et al. [START_REF] Janssen | Measuring and Benchmarking the Back-End of E-Government. A Participative Self-Assessment Approach[END_REF] argue for the need to update the traditional concept and forms of benchmarking to address contemporary issues. To this end, the activity is described using three dimensions: benchmarker -who is benchmarking; target -what is to be benchmarked; and partner -with whom the subject will be benchmarked.

Banister [START_REF] Bannister | The Curse of the Benchmark: An Assessment of the Validity and Value of e-Government Comparisons[END_REF], to answer the questions of usefulness and beneficiaries of EGOV benchmarking, discusses conceptual issues in EGOV benchmarking and proposes three questions for any benchmarking exercise: what is the purpose, what is to be measured, and what type of benchmarking should be carried out.

Saleem [START_REF] O'leary | Enterprise Ontologies: Review and an Activity Theory Approach[END_REF] provides a conceptual framework to guide governments in assessing the applicability of EGOV benchmarking as a driver for EGOV initiatives. The framework employs four dimensions to analyze international benchmarking reports: context, methodology, benchmarking type, and sociological paradigm.

Codagnone et al. [START_REF] Codagnone | Benchmarking eGovernment: Tools, Theory, and Practice[END_REF], drawing from concrete practice, describe a conceptual framework for EGOV benchmarking based on the European Commission's benchmarking projects. The framework provides three dimensions in the form of questions: what to measure, how to measure, and for whom to measure.

Lastly, Jansen et al. [START_REF]IANIS: Guide to Regional Good Practice Indicators and Benchmarking[END_REF] describes a model-based method aimed at improving the practice of EGOV service benchmarking, with fives benchmarking dimensions: goal, respondents, indicators, methods and infrastructure; and three levels of analysis: benchmark partner level, organizational level, and specific service level.

Practice-Oriented Conceptualizations

Among the practice-oriented conceptualizations [START_REF] Engeström | The Future of Activity Theory: A Rough Draft[END_REF][14] [START_REF] Paasi | Benchmarking Policies[END_REF] presented in this section, [START_REF] Heeks | eGovernment as a Carrier of Context[END_REF][26] focus respectively on benchmarking Information Society and EGOV within the European Union, while [START_REF] Engeström | The Future of Activity Theory: A Rough Draft[END_REF] provides concrete EGOV benchmarking guidelines. The three conceptualizations are described as follows.

IANIS [START_REF] Heeks | eGovernment as a Carrier of Context[END_REF] identifies a number of dimensions for carrying out benchmarking in support of EU regional strategies for developing the information society: what to collect data about, when to collect data, about whom to collect data, from whom to collect, how to collect secondary data, how to collect fresh data, at what level of aggregation to compare regions, and how to process benchmark data.

EUeGovBe [START_REF] Paasi | Benchmarking Policies[END_REF] is a related but specialized framework for EU e-Government Benchmarking. The framework presents three detailed dimensions: guiding principles and policy, benchmarking method and reporting and learning.

Heeks [START_REF] Engeström | The Future of Activity Theory: A Rough Draft[END_REF] provides detailed guidelines on how to answer the questions of purpose, subject, method and presentation of EGOV benchmarking, together with conceptual models to support the operationalization of the benchmarking exercise.

Observations

As we can see in Sections 2.1 and 2.2, the purpose of conceptualizations varies, from analysis of benchmarking initiatives, through effective use of benchmarking results, to standardization of the benchmarking practice and tracking of policy implementations. Unlike traditional benchmarking which is carried out by an organization to learn from others, and thus improve its own operations, EGOV-related benchmarking is carried out mostly by third-party organizations [START_REF] Bannister | The Curse of the Benchmark: An Assessment of the Validity and Value of e-Government Comparisons[END_REF]. Among the reviewed conceptualizations, only [START_REF]IANIS: Guide to Regional Good Practice Indicators and Benchmarking[END_REF][17] position government in the role of a benchmarking entity. This may affect the expectations of the learning outcomes in the EGOV benchmarking. For instance, only [START_REF] Engeström | The Future of Activity Theory: A Rough Draft[END_REF][26] explicitly address the learning objectives.

Considering our goal, none of the research-oriented EGOV conceptualizations, except [START_REF] Janssen | Measuring and Benchmarking the Back-End of E-Government. A Participative Self-Assessment Approach[END_REF], has been formally derived or associated with specific theory or existing conceptualization. The conceptualizations are also relatively incomplete, compared to generic ones [START_REF] Janssen | Measuring and Benchmarking the Back-End of E-Government. A Participative Self-Assessment Approach[END_REF], lack validity information, and mappings between them do not exist.

By conceptualization we mean the process of transforming a theoretical construct, for instance "EGOV benchmarking", into observable or measured concepts, for instance the "benchmark method" with "scope", "data gathering method"," type of analysis" and "research paradigm" elements [START_REF] Kyrö | Revising the Concept and Forms of Benchmarking[END_REF]. By theoretical construct we mean a set of conceptual terms used to define a phenomenon of theoretical interest [START_REF] Edwards | Construct Validation in Organizational Behavior Research[END_REF], used as fundamental elements to drive research and practice in a given field [START_REF]IANIS: Guide to Regional Good Practice Indicators and Benchmarking[END_REF].

Conceptualization is essentially carried out in two ways: theoretical -starting from a theoretical construct and then operationalizing and measuring it, or observationalstarting with observations and relating them through models. Adopting the former approach, this work starts with the EGOV benchmarking construct but, to minimize possible inconsistencies caused by different operationalizations, constrains the resulting conceptual model in a way similar to the hybrid approach described in [START_REF] Kyrö | Revising the Concept and Forms of Benchmarking[END_REF].

The methodology prescribes two basic steps grounded in Activity Theory [START_REF] Kyrö | Revising the Concept and Forms of Benchmarking[END_REF] and depicted in Table 1: inductive -determine the dimensions of the construct, and deductive -relate the dimensions into a conceptual model. The former starts by considering benchmarking simply as an activity undertaken by human agents for a certain purpose. This enables the grounding of benchmarking in Activity Theory [START_REF] Nardi | Action Models, and Distributed Cognition[END_REF][27] and identification of initial dimensions of the benchmarking construct, used to discover domain-specific dimensions from the conceptualizations in Section 2. The task is analogous to ontology mapping [START_REF] Bruijin | Ontology Merging and Aligning V1[END_REF] or integration of constructs [START_REF] Janssen | Measuring and Benchmarking the Back-End of E-Government. A Participative Self-Assessment Approach[END_REF]. The deductive step systematizes the dimensions, creating a conceptual model for EGOV benchmarking, where the meaning of dimensions and the relationships between them are consistent with those of the underlying Activity Theory-based benchmarking model. The approach is similar to [START_REF] Janssen | Measuring and Benchmarking the Back-End of E-Government. A Participative Self-Assessment Approach[END_REF] -mapping and analyzing benchmarking conceptualizations to build a more detailed conceptualization, and [START_REF] Nardi | Action Models, and Distributed Cognition[END_REF] -using Activity Theory to synthesize dimensions of an enterprise ontology.

Theoretical Framework -Activity Theory

The Activity Theory is a tool for better understanding human activities within social and organizational contexts, attempting to link human actions with the relevant contextual elements [START_REF] Schellong | EU e-Government Benchmarking 2010 EU e-Government Benchmarking -General Remarks on the Future of Benchmarking Digital Government in the EU[END_REF]. The theory enables assessing the factors that influence the performance of an Activity by a Subject, using Artifacts, subject to certain Rules, and divided among members of a Community to act in specific Roles, to accomplish an Object and ultimately an Outcome that influences an organization [START_REF] Nardi | Action Models, and Distributed Cognition[END_REF]. Figure 1 depicts the model of an activity derived from Engestrom [START_REF] Vakkayil | Activity Theory: A Useful Framework for Analysing Project-Based Organizations[END_REF] and the original in [START_REF] Schellong | EU e-Government Benchmarking 2010 EU e-Government Benchmarking -General Remarks on the Future of Benchmarking Digital Government in the EU[END_REF].

Figure 1. Activity Representation in Activity Theory

As a unit of analysis, activities are [START_REF] Schellong | EU e-Government Benchmarking 2010 EU e-Government Benchmarking -General Remarks on the Future of Benchmarking Digital Government in the EU[END_REF]: 1) mediated using artifacts and tools; 2) pragmatic as they are driven by objects and motives; 3) situated in specific time, space and community; 4) provisional as they evolve continuously; and 5) contested since they involve varied interests, viewpoints and perspectives and often give rise to contradictions both within and between activities (dialectical perspective).

The theory has been used in various domains including learning, organizational analysis, design of interactive systems and enterprise engineering [START_REF] Almeida | Simpler, Better, Faster, Cheaper, Contextual: Requirements Analysis for a Methodological Approach to Interaction Systems Development[END_REF][23] [START_REF] Schellong | EU e-Government Benchmarking 2010 EU e-Government Benchmarking -General Remarks on the Future of Benchmarking Digital Government in the EU[END_REF].

Activity Theory-Based EGOV Benchmarking

This section presents the details of the EGOV benchmarking conceptualization based on the Activity Theory. Section 5.1 shows how the theory helps synthesize the generic dimensions of the benchmarking construct. Section 5.2 interprets the eight EGOV benchmarking conceptualizations in Section 2 against the generic dimensions and helps discover new dimensions. Section 5.3 organizes all dimensions into an Activity Theory-based EGOV benchmarking model, followed by the operationalization of the model through a case study in Section 5.4 and its validation in Section 5.5.

Activity Theory-Based Generic Benchmarking Model

The relevance of the Activity Theory to EGOV benchmarking rests upon two arguments. First, benchmarking is an activity that should be carried out in a context [START_REF] Ammons | A Proper Mentality for Benchmarking[END_REF][4] [START_REF] Capgemini | Method Paper 2010 Preparing the 9th Benchmark Measurement[END_REF][16] [START_REF]IANIS: Guide to Regional Good Practice Indicators and Benchmarking[END_REF]. Second, as the context is often inscribed into EGOV system design, such inscriptions can mismatch the actual deployment context creating a contextual collision that could lead to EGOV failure [START_REF] Heeks | iGovernment eGovernment: Improving the National and International Measurement, Evaluation and Comparison of eGovernment[END_REF]. To operationalize this connection, consider that the benchmarking activity (Activity) is carried out: by a benchmarker (Subject); using a certain benchmarking approach (Artifacts); subject to certain benchmarking rules (Rules); and involving benchmarking partners (Community) with their commitments and roles (Roles); to achieve a certain benchmarking purpose (Object) and eventually the expected benchmarking results (Outcome). The resulting Activity Theory-based model for benchmarking is shown in Figure 2. This mapping identifies eight generic dimensions for the benchmarking construct: 1) Benchmarking, 2) Benchmarker, 3) Benchmarking Purpose, 4) Benchmarking Approach, 5) Benchmarking Result, 6) Benchmarking Partners, 7) Community Rules and 8) Partner Roles, which concludes the first task in our methodology.

Outcome Artifacts

Activity Theory-Based Interpretation of EGOV Benchmarking

This section interprets eight EGOV benchmarking conceptualizations in Section 2 against the generic dimensions of the EGOV benchmarking construct in Section 5.1. This has two goals: 1) provide EGOV-specific semantics to the generic benchmarking dimensions and 2) discover new dimensions for the EGOV benchmarking construct to explain existing conceptualizations, beyond the explanatory power of the Activity Theory. The interpretation is carried out by explaining each dimension using defining terms of existing EGOV conceptualizations as well as seeking the terms that cannot be explained by the generic dimensions. The exception to this is the Benchmarking dimension, explained in terms of the remaining, but having no source in existing conceptualizations (except the current paper). The result is shown in Table 3.

The definitions of the various terms in Table 3 are as defined in their source conceptualizations. However, the informal nature of the conceptualizations was the cause of frequent ambiguity of terms, making the task of mapping terms across conceptualizations challenging. For instance, the term Scope is used in [START_REF] Engeström | The Future of Activity Theory: A Rough Draft[END_REF] to represent a range of benchmark measures, part of the Benchmark dimension, but also in [START_REF] Janssen | Measuring and Benchmarking the Back-End of E-Government. A Participative Self-Assessment Approach[END_REF] to represent Geographical Scope. Term disambiguation and re-naming was carried out by examining example uses of each term in the conceptualizations.

Interestingly, the Activity Theory-based generic benchmarking dimensions suffice for explaining all eight EGOV benchmarking conceptualizations. On the one hand, all dimensions can be explained using defining terms of existing EGOV benchmarking conceptualizations, albeit to different extent. For example, the explanation of the Purpose, Community, Rules and Roles dimensions by existing research-oriented conceptualizations is weak. In fact, only [START_REF] Heeks | eGovernment as a Carrier of Context[END_REF] explicitly addresses the Rules dimension in its conceptualization. On the other, all defining terms of existing EGOV benchmarking conceptualizations could fit within one of eight generic dimensions except one -Benchmark. Benchmark is thus added as a new discovered dimension.

Activity Theory-Based EGOV Benchmarking Model

Figure 3, elaborating on the model in Figure 2, provides a more precise meaning for different dimensions of the EGOV benchmarking construct. The model adds centrally the Benchmark dimension, and dependencies between dimensions. The grounding in Activity Theory enables the exploitation of the theory in the EGOV benchmarking context. For instance, the Subject element in Activity Theory brings into focus the Benchmarker concept missing in many EGOV benchmarking conceptualizations. The aim of the exercise was to provide strategies and transferrable good practices in the area of EGOV (and e-participation) infrastructure. We highlight below the analyses made possible by the Activity Theory-based EGOV benchmarking dimensions, not provided or sufficiently explicated in existing conceptualizations.

Outcome -The project focused on two possible outcomes of the benchmarking exercise: producing strategies to lead to fundamental improvements in the country's EGOV program, and raising the country's international EGOV ranking to stimulate more funding. This prompted to carefully specify what information is sought.

Object -Considering the expected outcomes, the project elaborated and prioritized concrete objectives of the benchmarking exercise. In reaching the final decision of focusing on fundamental EGOV improvements and with increased country ranking as a secondary outcome, the implicit dialectical nature of Activity Theory was exploited.

Community -The notion of dynamically-changing Community with current state of Activity was applied in determining benchmarking partners through stakeholder analysis. The project developed community profiles to identify, adopt and utilize good practices e.g. a country with similar socio-economic and development condition serving as key sources of good practices in EGOV infrastructure development.

Roles -Based on the results of stakeholder analysis, each member of the identified Community was assigned a concrete Role for instance: data provider, benchmarking partner, best practice transfer facilitator, external user, etc.

Activity -Activity was treated as a context for developing various profiles for the benchmarking exercise, consisting of short statements and placeholders (meta-data) on different dimensions identified in the EGOV benchmarking model.

In a summary, the operationalization experience produced two main insights. First, the Activity, Object and Outcome dimensions enabled detailed profiling of the benchmarking exercise, addressing traditional concerns related to poor specification of benchmarking results [START_REF] Bannister | The Curse of the Benchmark: An Assessment of the Validity and Value of e-Government Comparisons[END_REF] and insufficient information to assist users in making effective use of them [START_REF] Heeks | eGovernment as a Carrier of Context[END_REF]. Second, the model provided a theoretical framework to enable reasoning about the design of the benchmarking exercise, e.g. the composition of Community vis-à-vis the expected Outcome and cost, or policy and political interests vis-à-vis the impact on long-term organization and institutional goals.

Validating Activity Theory-Based EGOV Benchmarking Model

Two basic validation obligations identified for this work are: 1) the soundness of use of Activity Theory as a basis for conceptualizing the benchmarking activities, and 2) the validity of our conceptualization in terms of the process and resulting dimensions.

Concerning the first obligation, we argue in Section 5.1 that benchmarking is fundamentally a context-based activity and shares inherent features of the activities defined in the Activity Theory. Concerning the process part of the second obligation, we explained in Section 3 how this work follows a well-established approach to conceptualization [21][19]. We could also adopt the formal conceptualization practice through ontologies. In fact, our mapping and integration process is analogous to a typical ontology mapping and integration exercises, and similar to [START_REF] O'leary | Enterprise Ontologies: Review and an Activity Theory Approach[END_REF] which also relies on Activity Theory as its base theory. Concerning the dimension part of the second obligation, the mapping of Activity Theory-based dimensions to equivalent dimensions across existing conceptualizations provides a form of validation or cross validation in terms of the relevance of the dimensions. Empirical validation e.g. vertical validity [START_REF] Edwards | Construct Validation in Organizational Behavior Research[END_REF][29] of the dimensions and the established relations are planned as part of our future work. However, the use of our conceptualization in a concrete project in Section 5.4 is a first step in establishing its validity empirically.

Discussion

So far, the proposals for improving the EGOV benchmarking practice focused mainly on finding better measures and associated indicators. Lately, the emphasis has been on situating the EGOV benchmarking in well-defined policy [6][28] or organizational [START_REF] Jansen | The Contextual Benchmark Method: Benchmarking e-Government Services[END_REF] contexts, and benchmarking the EGOV backend [17][27]. Our first proposition (P1) is therefore that a conscious contextual embedding is critical to EGOV benchmarking in view of its purpose and to enable its exploitation. The next challenge is how to bridge different contexts to enable accumulation of knowledge from cases, facing lack of a unifying theory to guide progress in the field [START_REF] Yasin | The Theory and Practice of Benchmarking: Then and Now[END_REF] and methodological pluralism characteristic of e-Government measurement [START_REF] Codagnone | Benchmarking eGovernment: Tools, Theory, and Practice[END_REF]. Thus our second proposition (P2) is that the availability of a unifying framework for EGOV benchmarking is essential to advancing its theory and practice.

In line with the second proposition, the paper shows that Activity Theory can play the role of a top-level integrative conceptualization for EGOV benchmarking, similar to the development of Activity Theory-based Enterprise Ontology in [START_REF] O'leary | Enterprise Ontologies: Review and an Activity Theory Approach[END_REF]. This leads to our third proposition (P3) that Activity Theory provides a useful framework for understanding and improving the EGOV benchmarking practice particularly through its focus on the context and purpose of the benchmarking activity. This is particularly important in view of the challenges facing public sector and EGOV benchmarking: determining time and cost [START_REF] Dorsch | A Framework for Benchmarking in the Public Sector Future Research[END_REF][16] [START_REF] Yasin | The Theory and Practice of Benchmarking: Then and Now[END_REF], assessing the impact of benchmarking on an organizations [START_REF] Dorsch | A Framework for Benchmarking in the Public Sector Future Research[END_REF] and ensuring that the benchmarking results are used correctly [START_REF] Salem | Benchmarking the e-Government Bulldozer: Beyond Measuring the Tread Marks[END_REF].

Further evidence in support of P3 is the possibility to address the correct use of benchmarking results through so-called using Activity Theory-based inter-activity systems [START_REF] Engeström | The Future of Activity Theory: A Rough Draft[END_REF] or boundary objects connecting multi-activity subjects [START_REF] Vakkayil | Activity Theory: A Useful Framework for Analysing Project-Based Organizations[END_REF]. The former also appear applicable to the regional benchmarking frameworks where either the outcomes or artifacts are shared among ongoing benchmarking activities.

Given its inherent limitations [START_REF] Vakkayil | Activity Theory: A Useful Framework for Analysing Project-Based Organizations[END_REF] and as Activity Theory evolves to address emerging organizational challenges, the range of its application in the benchmarking domain will have to be discovered over time.

Conclusion

The current EGOV benchmarking practice suffers from the lack of a theoretical framework to facilitate the accumulation of knowledge in the domain when carrying out different benchmarking exercises. This paper makes a step towards building a theoretical framework for EGOV benchmarking which relies on Activity Theory and which unifies existing conceptualizations. This effort opens up the possibility of exploring relationships between the dimensions towards domain theory building. For benchmarking practice, the model provides a comprehensive high-level framework for designing and analyzing EGOV benchmarking activities. Practical application of the model has also shown that it offers analysis and insight which are not possible with existing conceptualizations, e.g. the notion of communities and conflicts between the different interests of their members. Our future work includes applying the developed conceptual model to analyze and profile more EGOV benchmarking cases, towards empirical validation, as well as exploiting recent developments and extensions in the Activity Theory to address specific benchmarking challenges.

Figure 3 .

 3 Figure 3. Activity Theory-Based EGOV Benchmarking Model

Table 1 .

 1 EGOV Conceptualization Methodology

		Inductive Step	Deductive Step
	Activity Theory	Generic dimensions for the benchmarking	Activity Theory-based
		construct based on Activity Theory	model for benchmarking
	EGOV-related	Domain-specific EGOV benchmarking	EGOV with domain-
	Conceptualizations	dimensions with existing conceptualizations	specific dimensions

  Refer to how cooperation and specialization occurs in an Activity to achieve the Object. In the benchmarking domain, Roles are mapped into Partner Roles, e.g. commitment by Community partners to implement good practices.

	Activity 8. Roles -		Artifacts		Outcome
	Benchmarking	Benchmarking Approach	Benchmarking Result
	Activity
	Subject		Object
	Benchmarker	Object Benchmarking Purpose
	Rules Rules		Community Community	Roles	Roles
	Community Rules	Benchmarking Partners	Partner Roles
	Figure 2. Activity Theory-Based Benchmarking Model
					government
	organization, international EGOV ranking organization, EGOV researcher, etc.
	3. Object -It is explored or transformed by Subject to motivate and achieve the
	goals of Activity. In the benchmarking domain, Object is mapped into
	Benchmarking Purpose, e.g. "to determine the source of good practice for citizen-
	focused mobile services" and determines the Benchmarks or measures.
	4. Artifact -The material or conceptual tools that mediate actions of the Subject on
	the Object, produced by other activities. In the benchmarking domain, Artifact is
	mapped into Benchmarking Approach -processes, techniques and tools to
	support the benchmarking activity, e.g. online survey instruments.
	5. Outcome -The final result of Activity obtained when pursuing Object, possibly
	serving as Artifact for another Activity. In the benchmarking domain, Outcome is
	mapped into Benchmarking Result, e.g. EGOV ranking or benchmarking report
	prepared by a government agency for a supervisory office.
	6. Community -All partners (people or organizations) directly involved in Activity,
	sharing the Object with the Subject, and establishing a link between the Subject
	and Activity context. In the benchmarking domain, Community is mapped into
	Benchmarking Partners for data gathering, resourcing and joint implementation.
	7. Rules -The norms -guidelines, code of conduct, heuristics and conventions that
	mediate cooperation within and participation of the Subject in the Community. In
	the benchmarking domain, Rules are mapped into Community Rules, e.g. open
	publication of data on public service delivery by Community partners.

The model maps the eight generic concepts of the Activity Theory -Activity, Subject, Artifact, Object, Outcome, Community, Roles and Rules into the corresponding concepts in the benchmarking domain, as follows

[START_REF] Almeida | Simpler, Better, Faster, Cheaper, Contextual: Requirements Analysis for a Methodological Approach to Interaction Systems Development[END_REF]

[21][23]:

1. Activity -A form of "doing", it is the main object of concern in Activity Theory and usually comprises several actions. In the benchmarking domain, Activity is mapped into Benchmarking. It is specified as a collection of the specifications of the other seven elements defined below. Example is EGOV Benchmarking. 2. Subject -An individual or organization that undertakes an Activity. In the benchmarking domain, Subject is mapped into Benchmarker e.g.

Table 1 .

 1 Interpreting EGOV Benchmarking Conceptualizations against Generic Dimensions

	No Dimensions	Defining Terms	Conceptualizations
	1 Benchmarking Benchmarker; Benchmarking: Purpose,
		Approach, Result, Partners; Community
		Rules; Partner Roles
	2 Benchmarker	Nature of Organization, Organizational	Kyro et al., Banister,
		Structure Type, Geographical Scope	Saleem
	3 Benchmarking	Purpose, Policy, Priorities	Heeks, Banister, Saleem,
	Purpose		Jansen et al., EUeGOVBe


Jie Jiang
email: jie.jiang@tudelft.nl

Virginia Dignum
email: m.v.dignum@tudelft.nl

Yao-Hua Tan
email: y.tan@tudelft.nl

Sietse Overbeek
email: s.j.overbeek@tudelft.nl

A Context-aware Inter-organizational Collaboration Model Applied to International Trade

Keywords: context, international trade, OperA, organization modeling, roles

In international trade, there are a number of aspects that influence the interactive relationships between business organizations and governmental organizations, which makes it difficult to regulate the business processes in an integrated way. Modeling such kinds of organizational interactions requires a mechanism to differentiate interactive environments and elaborate regulations according to their characteristics. For this purpose, a context-aware interorganizational modeling approach is proposed in this paper. The approach analyzes organizational interactions through three phases from abstract to concrete: (1) general specifications which describe organizations in terms of atomic roles with intellectual objectives, (2) contextual specifications which extend general specifications by applying contexts to derive composite roles with details on how to accomplish the objectives, and (3) operational specifications which construct a set of complete models of an interorganizational collaboration by assembling contextual specifications according to the run-time environment. An example consisting of two scenarios of direct control and self-regulation in international trade is used to illustrate our model.

Introduction

With the rapid development of international trade, strategic alliances, collaborative commerce, virtual corporations, and value chain integration of multiple organizations are established to achieve better performance [START_REF] Chea | A multi-process actors strategic analysis model for flexible E-business proposition based on value networks configuration framework[END_REF]. Collaborative organizations are involved in the value chain to accomplish not only their own goals but also the cooperative goals. On the one hand, business organizations try to operate as efficiently as possible. On the other hand, governmental organizations have to perform tasks in the area of security to regulate business performance. Governmental control and regulation of complex multi-organization alliances is not only timeconsuming but also costs a great deal of human resources. Hence, interactions between business and governmental organizations is changing from monolithic control by regulatory authorities to distributed environments where private enterprises are free to regulate their affairs within boundaries set by the regulatory authorities. The former way of controlling is called direct control and the latter is named self-regulation. In order to determine the effects and possibilities of different approaches for direct control and self-regulation, a careful analysis is required to make sure that integrated business processes are performed in a secure and smooth way. To this end, we propose a framework that enables modeling and comparisons between different inter-organizational collaborative approaches. A large number of aspects influence the regulative relationships between business and governmental organizations, such as:  Diversity of business types: food, clothes, electronic devices, etc.  Diversity of regulation policies: AEO1 , C-TPAT 2 , etc.  Diversity of partnerships: long-term, short-term, etc. Combinations of these factors result in different relations between governments and businesses due to the different policies applicable in each case. For example, the safety requirements for an AEO certificate are interpreted quite differently for a company that is exporting dairy products (risk of food safety) than for a company that is exporting scrap metal (risk of hidden bombs). Even though at an abstract level, regulative relations between governments and businesses can be modeled in the same way, the diversity of specific contexts and their characteristics leads to an explosion of interactive models (i.e., models are case specific and not re-usable), which makes it difficult for both business and governmental organizations to articulate their interactions. Context-aware applications provide potential solutions to this problem as they look at who's, where's, when's and what's to determine why the situation is occurring [START_REF] Yang | A JESS-enabled context elicitation system for providing context-aware Web services[END_REF].

Moreover, the individual characteristics of actors in the interactions need to be further detailed to make sure that they can fit the requirements and restrictions of both businesses and governments. Therefore, the main objective of this paper is to describe how to model organizational interactions following a contextual refinement process, i.e., from abstract to concrete. This enables each partner in the supply chain to specify their responsibilities precisely and avoid unpredictable failures such as unmatchable information, misbehaving, etc.

Business organizations and governmental organizations interact with each other within a set of regulations, which can be described as a Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) where multiple intelligent agents interact within a set of norms. In a given MAS, cooperation between agents that possess diverse knowledge and capabilities facilitate the achievement of global goals that cannot be achieved by a single agent. MASs have been shown to be highly appropriate for the modeling of open, distributed, and heterogeneous systems [START_REF] Beydoun | FAML: A generic metamodel for MAS development[END_REF]. OperA [START_REF] Dignum | A model for organizational interaction: based on agents, founded in logic[END_REF], being an agent-based modeling framework, has provided a basis for modeling multi-organization interactions. Therefore, in this paper we extend its architecture and present a framework that not only involves the notion of context but also supports a contextual refinement modeling process. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. In section 2, the background and related work of our research are presented. Section 3 illustrates the proposed model by explaining its formal definitions with an example. Then, in section 4 the design guidelines of the model are presented. Finally, section 5 draws the conclusions and discusses our future work.

Background and Related Work

Comprehensive analysis of agent systems has shown that different design approaches are appropriate for different domain characteristics [START_REF] Dignum | Designing agent systems: State of the practice[END_REF]. In particular, multi-agent organization frameworks are suitable to model complex environments where many independent entities coexist within explicit normative and organizational structures. Numbers of MAS methodologies with a clear organizational vision have been developed such as Gaia [START_REF] Zambonelli | Developing multiagent systems: the Gaia Methodology[END_REF], Tropos [START_REF] Bresciani | Tropos: an agentoriented software development methodology[END_REF], MOISE+ [START_REF] Hübner | A Model for the Structural, Functional, and Deontic Specification of Organizations in Multiagent Systems[END_REF], AGR [START_REF] Ferber | From agents to organizations: an organizational view of multi-agent systems[END_REF], INGENIAS [START_REF] Pavón | The INGENIAS methodology and tools[END_REF], etc., which provide potential approaches for modeling inter-organizational interactions between business and governmental organizations.

All these approaches adopt the notion of role enacted by agents. Role is defined as functions and/or responsibilities that guide individual behaviors and regulate group interactions [START_REF] Hare | Types of roles in small groups: A bit of history and a current perspective[END_REF]. Strijbos et al. [START_REF] Strijbos | Developing the role concept for computer-supported collaborative learning: An explorative synthesis[END_REF] discern three levels of the role concept: micro (role as task), meso (role as pattern) and macro (role as stance). Dahchour et al. [START_REF] Dahchour | A role model and its metaclass implementation[END_REF] present a generic role model in which both static and dynamic aspects of the role relationship are considered. There is a different perspective in the field of Role-based Access Control (RBAC), in which roles are used to identify use classes for systems.

As discussed in the Introduction, context-aware applications are appropriate for modeling different interactive environments. In the field of computer science, context is regarded as a set of attributes associated to specific situations. From the perspective of cognitive modeling, a dynamic theory of context considers context as the set of all entities that influence human cognitive behavior on a specific occasion [START_REF] Kokinov | A dynamic approach to context modeling[END_REF]. In the field of sociology, context is regarded as networks of interacting entities and focuses on the structural properties deriving from recurrent interactions among entities. In international trade, we define context as a set of states associated to interactive entities in specific environments. The regulation of business activities by governments is different according to the context of operation. An example of self-regulation context in international trade is the Authorized Economic Operator (AEO) program [START_REF] Burgemeestre | Towards an architecture for self-regulating agents: a case study in international trade[END_REF]. In this paper, we use this specific case of AEO to analyze and compare the two scenarios of direct control and self-regulation by the proposed model.

Based on the studies of MAS, Role and Context, we propose a context-aware interorganizational collaboration model which [START_REF] Chea | A multi-process actors strategic analysis model for flexible E-business proposition based on value networks configuration framework[END_REF] gives an elaborated analysis of roles, (2) explicitly considers the influence of contexts on organizational interactions, and (3) supports a contextual refinement process for modeling organizations. We use the OperA framework as a basis for our work because firstly it is a formal organization model, secondly it has a well-defined structure for roles and dependencies, and lastly it has a software analysis tool that can be used for evaluation.

The OperA framework [START_REF] Dignum | A model for organizational interaction: based on agents, founded in logic[END_REF] consists of three interrelated models: The Organizational Model (OM) is the result of the observation and analysis of the domain and describes the desired behavior of the organization. The Social Model (SM) maps organizational roles to agents and describes agreements concerning the role enactment in social contracts. Roles are typically declarative entities meant to represent a part of the organization's design and can be taken up by the agents enacting the role. Objectives of an organization are achieved through the actions of agents. Finally, the Interaction Model (IM) specifies the interaction agreements between role-enacting agents. This paper focuses on the social structure in the OM dimension of OperA which describes organizational interactions from the designer's perspective and is also the first step in the methodology of OperA framework.

A Context-aware Inter-organizational Collaboration Model

In this section, we introduce our model and illustrate it by an example. In the example, we apply the proposed model to describe two scenarios of direct control and self-regulation using the specific case of AEO in international trade.

Fundamental Concepts

We first illustrate several concepts extended from OperA, which provide a basis to the proposed model. We only show a part of the properties of each concept to keep it simplified. Note that an element presented by a lowercase letter is a member of the set indicated by the corresponding capital letter, e.g., R r  . 1) Role (r) A role is a set of objectives Obj. Objectives of a role indicate its individual responsibility, i.e., if a role is enacted, its individual responsibility is undertaken. To facilitate multiple levels of modeling from abstract to concrete, we define two kinds of roles in OperA+.

(1) Atomic role (r A = (name, Obj)) Atomic roles are roles as stance which hold relatively general objectives. They provide a macro-level understanding of what tasks will be carried out.

(2) Composite role (r C = (name, Obj, intl)) Composite roles are roles as pattern which not only express the stance through their objectives but also give more details on how to accomplish the objectives through lower level organizations, each of which is indicated by an inter-level link intl = (r, org). The pattern is represented by the sub-roles in the lower-level organization.

2) Organization (org = (name, R, Dep)) An organization is a set of connected roles. Roles in an organization connect with each other through a set of role dependencies Dep which promotes group cohesion.

) , , ( 2

1 obj r r dep 
indicates that r 1 depends on r 2 for objective obj. Moreover, there is only one top level organization marked as org 0 in each model and all the other organizations are derived from composite roles.

Contextual Refinement Modeling Process

In order to provide actors in international trade with an evolutionary understanding of their responsibilities, our proposal illustrates a modeling process for organizational interactions from an abstract level to a concrete level as depicted in Fig. 1.

First, a general specification is constructed to express the common objectives of inter-organizational collaborations in an abstract way, which captures the root goals of an international trade from a comprehensive perspective. For example, whether an international trade is exporting food or clothes, the general specification contains the same set of roles at an abstract level, such as exporter, carrier, customs, etc. General specifications only consist of atomic roles which give stances of how interactions are organized. Then, according to different contexts, the general specification is contextualized into different contextual specifications which describe the interactive relationships in a more detailed way and present the differences between different situations of an international trade. Contextualization applies contextual information to general specifications and transforms some of the atomic roles to composite roles which contain more information or constraints on how to realize the objectives of the roles. Finally, the whole set of contextual specifications is transformed into different operational specifications which depict complete pictures of an inter-organizational collaboration model in different executable situations. That is, actors in international trades will match their status with the contexts in contextual specifications and select corresponding roles. We can see that the three phases form a contextual refinement modeling process which gives each actor a better understanding of its individual part as well as its interactive parts. For detailed illustrations, we give the following definitions.

General specification

Contextualization

Operationalization

Abstract

Concrete

Contextual specification

Operational specification

Fig. 1. Three phases of the modeling process. This figure illustrates the three phases to model organizational interactions from an abstract level to a concrete level in our proposal.

General Specification

To capture the vision of the organizational goals from the designer's perspective, we first formalize the concept of a general specification.

Definition 1. (general specification). A general specification

N i org gs i  ,
of an organization org i is a tuple (name, R A , Dep) such that:

 name is an identifier,  R A is a set of roles,  A R r  
is an atomic role and  Dep is a set of role dependencies. A general specification shows a map of abstract expectations for the collaboration model without providing detailed information or constraints on how to accomplish the objectives of each role.

To illustrate our proposal, we use a running example to explain how Regulatory authorities and Private enterprise collaborate with each other in two scenarios, viz. those of direct control and self-regulation in international trade. Table 1 shows the general specification gs org 0 of the top-level organization org 0 in the example. The objectives of the Ra and Pe in org 0 are intellectual attitudes of the designer's expectations and little information is given on how to reach the objectives. Therefore, at this level, role enactors have the freedom to decide on how to perform their tasks. Furthermore, the two roles are inter-dependent for their objectives.

Contextual Specification

In international trade, organizational interactions are not only determined by individual roles or organizations but also dependent on the environment. Therefore, the notion of a context in our model is defined as the environment of a general specification that satisfies a set of given conditions, which is as follows. ) ( ), , ( :

gs i A S S org R R Cond R state State state    
indicates the inter-state between multiple roles. For example, (exporter, carrier, long-term) indicates that the exporter and the carrier interact with each other in the context of long-term cooperation. Specifically, when there is only one role in R S , the intra-state of an individual role is specified.

In the example, we use a specific case of AEO certification to illustrate the notion of context. With an AEO certification, a company is trusted throughout the EU for customs related regulations and is granted the power of self-control [START_REF]AEO Guidelines[END_REF]. Therefore, in our example, with AEO corresponds to the scenario of self-regulation while without AEO corresponds to the scenario of direct control. Based on these two scenarios of direct control and self-regulation, we define two contexts below.

(ctx 1 , gs org 0 , {(Ra, Pe, without an AEO certification)}), (ctx 2 , gs org 0 , {(Ra, Pe, with an AEO certification)}). The influence of a context on an organization is realized through role transformation from atomic role to composite role. In this sense, context adds more information to some of the roles by extending them to lower level organizations, which realizes the process of adding regulations on some of the roles in international Based on the definition of context and its influence on other modeling elements, we formalize the concept of contextual specification as follows.

Definition 3. (contextual specification). A contextual specification cs i org of an organization org i is a tuple (

C A R R ctx name , , , ' ) such that:  name is an identifier,  ctx is a context,  ' A R is a set of atomic roles,  R C is a set of composite roles and  )) ( ( ' ' ctx org R R R R R gs i A C A C A       .
R C specifies which roles in the general specification associated with ctx are transformed from atomic roles to composite roles. This is in accordance with the fact that different contexts have different influence on different sets of roles.

)) ( (

' ' ctx org R R R R R gs i A C A C A     



indicates that all the roles either atomic or composite in contextual specifications are derived from the roles in a general specification. Besides, a role can be influenced by multiple contexts in which it is extended to different lower level organizations of sub-roles and dependencies. Given gs org 0 , there are two contexts with different sets of R C . Therefore, two contextual specifications are constructed.

(

1 0 cs org , ctx 1 , {Pe}, R(Ra)) and ( 2 0 cs org , ctx 2 ,  , R(Ra)  R(Pe)). 1 0 cs org
shows the scenario of direct control described by ctx 1 in which the Pe is fully regulated by the Ra.

2 0 cs org shows the scenario of self-regulation described by ctx 2 in which the Pe undertakes a part of the responsibilities from the Ra. Detailed descriptions are shown respectively in Table 2 and3. Note that we use the same name for the atomic role in the general specification, its corresponding composite role in the contextual specification and its referred lower level organization. In ctx 1 , only the Ra transforms to a composite role which refers to a lower level organization consisting of five atomic roles that are fine-grained divisions of the Ra. This is the situation of direct control in international trade and the Ra is extended to restrict the behaviors of its enactors. That is, role enactors of the Ra should follow the pattern constituted by the lower level organization. Therefore, at this level, as the context brings more information from the environment, detailed specification of the organizational interactions should be specified. In ctx 2 , both the Ra and the Pe transform to a composite role. It can be seen that some of the roles in the lower level organization of Ra in ctx 1 shift to the lower level organization of Pe in ctx 2 . This is the situation of self-control in international trade in which a part of the responsibilities of the Ra transfers to the Pe with AEO certification. We can see that the same general specification transforms to two contextual specifications with different extensions or restrictions on how to reach the collective goals of the top level organizations in a detailed way. This is an intuitive way to explain how the organizational interactions are evolved.

Operational Specification

A general specification has multiple extensions because of different contexts. That is, the high level abstraction can be re-used in different situations by applying different contexts. However, at runtime, there must be a complete specification which describes the model in a whole. Therefore, we give the definition of an operational specification below. Definition 4. (operational specification). An operational specification os of an interorganizational collaboration is a tuple (name, Org cs , cs org 0 , R * , Intl * ) such that:

 name is an identifier,  Org cs is a set of contextual specifications,  )) ( ( )) ( ( : , , 2 1 2 1 2 1 cs i gs i cs i gs i cs cs i cs i org ctx org org ctx org i i Org org org     ,  cs cs Org org  0 is a contextual specification of the top level organization,  )) ( ) ( ( ' * cs i C cs i A Org org org R org R R cs cs i    
is the set of all roles,

 cs cs cs i C Org org org Org org R Intl cs cs i 0 * \ ) ( :    is
     ) ( : ! : \ * 0
indicates that except the top level organization, all other organizations have only one inward inter-level link so that no loop exists in operational specifications. An operational specification is a hierarchy in which the top level organization forms its root while lower level organizations form its inner nodes and leaves. The set of all contexts in an operational specification builds up the runtime environment. specification contains a complete description of organizational interactions associated with its context, which is an executable specification that can be seen as the assembling processes of different agents. For example, a company with an AEO certification in the Netherlands exports goods to another country in the EU and the Dutch Customs has to perform regulations on it. In this case, the company and the Dutch Customs fit in with the interactive environment of ctx 2 , which indicates that each of them has to perform as the specifications of the lower level organizations in os 2 .

Ra

Contextualization

General specification

Pe

Design Guidelines

In order to illustrate how contexts influence specifications, we give the design guidelines of the proposed model continued with the example which is shown in Fig. 2 as a tree-like structure. At the top, the root of the tree is a general specification of the top level organization which is made up of atomic roles. That is, in international trade, regulative authorities and private enterprises have the same interactive relationships at an abstract level. Contextualization is depicted as dashed lines and the root of the tree is extended to different contextual specifications through transforming some of the atomic roles into composite roles. It can be seen that a general specification has multiple dashed lines connected with it, which indicates that there can be multiple contexts related to one general specification. Contextualization is the process of detailing information on how to realize the objectives of a role in a specific circumstance, which provides an adapted way of generating concrete regulations according to different situations in international trade. Among the different contexts of contextualization connected with the same general specification, they have different effects on the general specification. Contextual specifications are differentiated by the extensions of their composite roles, i.e., the referred lower level organizations. Those lower level organizations are the concrete information or regulation on how to accomplish the objectives of the composite roles in a specific context. Operationalization is the process of selecting and assembling among all the alternative contextual specifications during run time according to the real interactive environment, which generates an operational specification that illustrates the whole executive environment and how the global objectives are achieved in terms of finergrained organizations and roles. Moreover, those lower level organizations in the contextual specifications can again be contextualized according to their own contexts, which facilitates a recursive modeling process.

Organizations usually have multiple contextual specifications, which is in accordance with the fact that business and governmental organizations have different collaborative relationships under different circumstances. However, for each situation, only one of the contextual specifications with the same general specification can be instantiated, i.e., only one dashed line (contextualization) connected with the same general specification is selected. Therefore, each operational specification contains a unique set of contextual specifications with different general specifications from an abstract level to a concrete level.

Interactions between business and governmental organizations are subject to a large number of norms and regulations [START_REF] Burgemeestre | Value-Based argumentation for justifying compliance[END_REF]. Norms of regulative issues are very complex and are to a large extent only implicitly represented by governmental organizations. Most of the knowledge is only in the heads of the government experts. Therefore, there are two difficulties with respect to the communications between business and governmental organizations: (1) Business organizations have to elicitate themselves the norms from the governmental organizations, (2) The norms have to be customized to the specifics of each business organization, e.g., safety risks for a dairy company is primarily food-safety, whereas safety risks for a scrap metal trading company is hazardous waste, or even hidden bombs, as bombs can be easily hidden in scrap metal. To this end, our proposal can help to solve these two difficulties: (1) by structuring the contextual refinement modeling process to guide both business organizations and governmental organizations to build their interactions from an abstract level to a concrete level, which provides both of them a better understanding of their responsibilities, and (2) by using contexts to differentiate the communications between business organizations and governmental organizations according to their status, i.e., business type, regulation policy, etc. Thus, the interaction process between business and governmental organizations can be viewed as a norm negotiation process in a multi-agent community, where agents can communicate with each other to determine their contextual norms through lower level specifications in the proposed model. This provides a potential solution to deal with the communication problems about self-regulation between multi-agents that jointly create shared norms, i.e., business and governmental organizations that co-create an operationalization of the open norms in legislation [START_REF] Burgemeestre | Norm emergence in regulatory compliance[END_REF].

Conclusions and Future Work

This paper proposes a context-aware inter-organizational collaboration model, which spans the model development process from abstract attitudes to concrete implementation. The three phases in the proposal are a natural reflection of an intuitive modeling procedure but with formal definitions. We have applied the model to analyze and compare the direct control and the self-regulation contexts in international trade. The framework supports users to understand their models during the procedure and makes it possible for users to reflect their design patterns even at the final operational stage.

Our current and future work includes extending the proposed model to the enactment layer which focuses on how to model enactors of roles such as business organizations, governmental organizations and individuals in the international trade environment, and obtain a good match between agents and roles in the specifications according to their characteristics. Moreover, a software platform is being developed to simulate the interactions between business and governmental organizations to find better solutions for the problem of norm negotiation between them. We will also work on modeling evolution from one to another organization form.

Fig. 2 .

 2 Fig. 2. Modeling process of the example. This figure illustrates the legend of the proposed model and how the two operational specifications are derived from the general specification.

Fig. 2

 2 Fig. 2 shows the two operational specifications os 1 and os 2 circled by dashed lines. They are respectively derived from

Table 1 .

 1 Role table for the top level organization. The table explains the roles, their objectives and dependencies in the top level organization.

	Organization Role	Role objective	Role dependencies
	org 0	Regulatory authorities (Ra) Efficient regulation Pe
		Private enterprise (Pe)	Efficient action	Ra

  State is a set of states related to the roles in Cond is a set of conditions which define the state of the roles. State defines the context for the general specification

																				gs org is
																				i
	a tuple (name,	gs org , State) such that:
					i
	 name is an identifier,
		gs org indicates the contextualized organization,
		i
	 gs org ,
																		i
		state 		State	:	state		(	R	,	Cond	),	R		R	(	gs	)	and
										S				S		A		i
	 gs org	.
																				i

Definition 2. (context). A context ctx associated with a general specification

Table 2 .

 2 Role table for the lower level organization in context ctx 1 . The table explains the roles, their objectives and dependencies in the lower level organization of Ra in ctx 1 .

	Organization	Role	Role objective	Role dependencies
	Ra	Norm maker	Effective norms making
		Norm specifier	Specify valuable norms	Norm maker
		Control indicator	Make efficient control	Norm specifier
		maker	indicators
		Action monitor	Efficient action monitoring	Control indicator
				maker
		Sanctioner	Correct sanctioning	Action monitor

Table 3 .

 3 Role table for the lower level organizations in context ctx 2 . The table explains the roles, their objectives and dependencies in the lower level organizations of Ra and Pe in ctx 2 .

	Organization	Role	Role objective	Role dependencies
	Ra	Norm maker	Make effective norms
		Control monitor	Efficient control monitoring Norm maker
		Sanctioner	Correct sanctioning	Control monitor
	Pe	Norm specifier	Specify valuable norms
		Control indicator	Make efficient control	Norm specifier
		maker	indicators
		Action monitor	Efficient action monitoring	Control indicator
				maker

The Authorized Economic Operator (AEO) is a European-wide customs initiative that aims to secure the supply chain while at the same time reducing the administrative burden for actors through the use of self-regulation.

The Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT) is a voluntary supply chain security program led by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.