Design Consideration of Sociomaterial Multi-Agent CSCW Systems

Abstract

The recent technological advancements have significantly redefined the context in which organizations do business processes including the processes used to acquire, process, and share information. The transformations that emerged across the organizational and institutional landscapes have led to the emergence of new organizational forms of design and new business models. Within this context, the new business patterns, platforms, and architectures have been developed to enable for the maximization of benefits from data through the adoption of collaborative work practices. The main focus of such practices is oriented towards the improvement of responsiveness, building of alliances, and enhancing organizational reach. The use of global networks and Web-based systems for the implementation of collaborative work has been accompanied with a wide range of computer-supported collaborative systems. This chapter examines the context of collaboration, collaborative work, and the development of agent-supported collaborative work system. It also examines the implications of the ontological positions of sociomateriality on agent-supported collaborative work domains in terms of the multi-agent architecture and multi-agent evaluation.