An approach to modelling informal communication in business networks

Nowadays, business market forces enterprises to make fast decisions for taking advantages upon opportunities. Many times, the strategic partnerships among enterprises are the only way to provide a fast response to those opportunities. This paper develops in a context in which enterprises have to establish negotiated agreements for successful networking among business partners. To this end, enterprise organizational structures, supported by adequate information systems, should enable the fast deployment of negotiated decisions. A considerable number of these decisions will be the result of negotiation processes, typically informal processes, for which there is no information system support capable of not only supporting the actual negotiation process but also enable its effective deployment in the organization. In this paper we propose an approach to modelling enterprise informal communication interaction in a negotiation setting. The proposed modelling framework is briefly introduced as well as its rationale in the enterprise collaborative environment fostering the support of informal communication across enterprise borders both at tactical and strategic management levels.