Understanding behaviour patterns of multi-agents in digital business ecosystems: An organisational semiotics inspired framework

Abstract

Digital business ecosystem (DBE) is a collaborative network of organisations, processes and technologies that collectively create value. Thus, value creation in DBEs is jointly undertaken by multiple human and digital agents. To aid appropriate apportionment of work and design of information systems, it is essential to understand behaviour of both human and digital agents. However limited attention has been paid to agents’ behaviour in the extant DBEs literature. Moreover, multi-agent research has also largely focused on technical issues while limited research exists on agents’ behaviour. As such, in this paper, we develop a framework to understand behaviour patterns of multi-agent in DBEs. This framework builds its foundation on the theoretical lens of Organisational Semiotics, a sociotechnical theory towards contribution to DBE research.