1 Introduction

The competition in the globalized markets forces organizations to co-create mass customized integrated solutions for customers through the formation of dynamic business networks [1]. These business networks need to handle dynamic interactions among parties within a value network in order to respond to an expected customer experience [2]. The interactions among parties can be seen as inter-organizational business processes that exchange information among parties. The formation of business networks, however, necessitates dealing with information exchange related issues resulting from the autonomy, the distribution, and the heterogeneity of information products [3, 4]. These issues highlight the need for considering information governance (IG) in the context of dynamic business networking.

Different architectural solutions have been developed in previous work to support dynamic formation of business networks (e.g. [5, 6]). Recent proposals [7] are targeting cloud computing systems as implementation platform [8]. In this position paper, we aim to investigate in the extent to which IG requirements in the context of dynamic business networking are covered by these existing architectural solutions. This gives us directions for further research to investigate how IT can support information governance for dynamic business networks.

The plan of this paper is as follows. In Sect. 2, we enumerate IG requirements that need to be attended to in architectural solutions in the context of dynamic business networking. In Sect. 3 we investigate how the enumerated IG requirements are addressed in the developed architectural solutions. A discussion is represented in Sect. 4 on the required architectural developments to support IG requirements in dynamic business networks. The paper is concluded in Sect. 5 by the delineation of future work.

2 IG Requirements in Dynamic Business Networking

IG can be characterized as a holistic approach to different mechanisms that are required to enable high quality information exchange [9]. IG can be seen within three main domains, respectively, the information quality (IQ), the information security, and the metadata domain [10]. The IQ indicates the extent to which information provided within a business network fits with stakeholders’ needs [11]. The IQ points out the information product quality as well as the information service quality. The former considers information as a product that needs to be produced by a manufacturing process with as end-product the information stored in a database. But, information service quality focuses on the activities occurring after information is stored as an end-product in a database, i.e. to enable consumers to obtain and use information. Information security underlines the protection of information confidentiality, integrity and availability [12]. Metadata reflects information about the data processed in an information service that enhances the usability and understandability of the service [10].

Dynamic business networking that entails dynamic partnering as well as dynamic operating among parties results in the emergence of new IG requirements. These IG requirements reflect the necessities of high quality information exchange. A list of IG issues resulting from dynamic business networking has been explored in [4]. A business network governor should effectively respond to these issues through different types of possible solutions like organizational solutions, architectural solutions, or computational solutions. In this paper we evaluate how well existing architectural solutions for dynamic business networks support IG. Based on the explored IG issues in dynamic business networking [4, 13], the IG requirements that need to be covered by an architectural solution are enumerated below:

  • Information product quality requirements: these requirements point out the quality issues of information products that are stored in distributed databases in a business network. Some examples of such pertaining requirements can be described as handling information product repetition and information product synchronization, and linkage of relevant information products.

  • Information service quality requirements: these requirements address the modification of the syntactic and semantic inconsistency of information services.

  • Information security requirements: these requirements underline the necessities for safeguarding added-value information assets.

  • Metadata requirements: These requirements imply the need for shared and generally accepted metadata in a business network to support a consistent understanding of the exchanged information.

3 Architectural Solutions Supporting Dynamic Business Networking

In this section we investigate to which extent the aforementioned IG requirements are addressed by architectural solutions that are developed in previous research to support dynamic business networking. For this purpose we concentrate on related works that consider interactions among collaborating parties as process-view based interoperations (see [14]). We found 8 related architectural solutions in previous work that address the formation of dynamic business networking. While most of them have been developed before cloud computing emerged, reference [8] explicitly targets a cloud computing implementation platform. We investigate how IG requirements have been attended in these related architectural solutions; see Table 1. For this investigation we rely on the requirements that have been identified for the development of these architectures as well as the components introduced within the architectural designs. The investigation is based on a 4-level assessment that is outlined in the legend of Table 1.

Table 1. IG requirements in architectural solutions supporting dynamic business networking
Full size table

The architecture proposed in [15, 16] assume syntactic consistency of information services within dynamic inter-organizational business processes. In this work, however the necessity for domain knowledge integration is addressed as an approach for metadata governance, but concrete relevant components are not reflected in the proposed architecture. The architecture developed in [14] focuses on the development of adapted process views to facilitate interoperability in dynamic supply networks. In this way, the proposed architecture addresses syntactic misalignment between process views; other IG requirements are not considered. Citation [17] modifies the syntactic inconsistencies among flexible distributed business processes through an Wf-XML message handler. It also clearly points out the reliability and security of the exchanged messages. Citation [18] represents an abstract architecture to overcome the heterogeneity of business process views; all other aspects of IG requirements are neglected. The architecture developed in the WISE project [7] provides a comprehensive view on business process management in virtual enterprises. But it doesn’t clearly address the IG requirements and its approach to deal with syntactic inconsistency and security issues does not offer concrete guidance. Using protocol adaptors to deal with the syntactic heterogeneity of information services is clearly addressed in [6]. However the proposed architecture remains quite abstract and does not address information governance. Citation [19] proposes the e-sourcing concept for interoperability in a business network. The proposed architecture in this work that refines the e-sourcing concept addresses syntactic and semantic inconsistency by a component supporting negotiation for setting up a collaboration configuration. It also handles information security through a trusted third part. However these components remain quite abstract and high-level solutions.

4 Discussion on Related Work

The investigation of related work, as reflected in Table 1, shows that from the IG requirements point of view the developed architectural solutions supporting dynamic business networking mostly concentrate on the information service quality. This might be due to the dominance of the service-oriented architecture that underlines the separation of the service functionality from the service internal logic. In this way, it can be conceived that in most of the developed architectural solutions the governance of information product is seen as the internal responsibility of information service providers. However, most of the information product quality requirements resulting from dynamic business networking (like information product repetition, synchronization, and pooling) cannot be met by information service providers and need to be addressed by a network governor. A central support by a network governor is required to enable information product quality in the whole value network. This central support should be aided by relevant components in architectural solutions.

Among the information service quality requirements, the developed architectural solutions have mostly focused on the modification of the syntactic and semantic inconsistencies between information services. The provision of integrated solutions for customers through dynamic business networking necessitates the collaboration of parties from different business contexts. The context-aware semantic modification of information services requires further development of the architectural solutions.

Although different solutions have been developed to support information security in dynamic business networks (e.g. [20]), a comprehensive and well-established view on security in dynamic business networking context needs further development. For instance, the modification of inconsistent security policies established by autonomous parties cannot easily be responded to by conventional dynamic trust management mechanisms. The architectural solutions supporting dynamic business networking require a more comprehensive view on information security.

Architectural solutions enhancing collaborative ontology management as a support for the metadata governance have been developed in previous research (e.g. [21]). However, this domain of information governance requirements has not been addressed clearly in aforementioned architectural designs. Indeed, it can be said that substantial developments is required in order to address metadata governance in the formation of dynamic business networks.

Architectural designs to support information governance in the context of the integrated information systems (e.g. [3, 22]), on the other hand, do not clearly address the requirements of formation of dynamic business networking. More specifically, these architectures reflect required components to support the information quality lifecycle in cooperative information systems, but a comprehensive view on IG requirements as represented in Sect. 2 is not addressed by these architectures. However, as a general idea, the composition of proposed components in these architectures with architectures supporting dynamic business networking would be an appropriate direction to respond to the aforementioned IG requirements.

Meanwhile, business scenarios that are considered for developing the investigated architectural solutions need to be updated to address emerging business visions like the service dominant logic of marketing and the product-service transition. These emerging visions underline the role of the customer as a co-developer and a co-creator in a value network. In this way, the dynamic B2B interactions need to be integrated with dynamic B2C interactions. Information governance in this emerging business situation deals with new requirements like customer information privacy. These emerging requirements may fundamentally transform all B2B interactions to B2C or actor to actor (A2A) relations. These emerging requirements may point out a revolutionary change in the aforementioned architectural designs.

5 Conclusion and Future Work

In this paper, from the IG point of view we critically investigated a number of proposed architectural solutions that support dynamic business networking. This investigation reflects required future developments in architectural designs to respond to IG requirements in emerging business networking scenarios. The findings show that substantial developments are required to enhance information governance requirements, particularly in emerging customer centric business networking scenarios.

As a next step, we aim to specify more concrete requirements of information governance in customer centric dynamic business networks. These requirements can be a well-established basis for the enrichment of the aforementioned architectural solutions through the development of new components.