Modeling and management of profiles and competencies in VBEs

Virtual organization Breeding Environments (VBEs) are long-term clusters/associations of autonomous and geographically dispersed organizations in the market and society. The VBE aims to prepare its member organizations and enhance their readiness for potential involvement in opportunity-based Virtual Organizations (VOs). Organizing/management of profiles is a key activity in VBEs. The need for management of profiles is even larger in medium-size and large-size VBEs (e.g. with more then 50 members), where typically the member organizations do not have the chance of getting to know all others directly. Furthermore, uniform structuring/modeling of the mostly textual content of profiles enables their processing by the software that supports variety of VBE functionality. An important element of the profiles in VBEs is the competency. There is no consensus on the definition of competency and the existing literature associate it with a range of tangible characteristics such as resources and products, as well as intangible characteristics such as knowledge and motivation. This paper introduces and details a unified/generic model for VBE profiles and VBE competencies. It further addresses the design of an adaptable, replicable and sustainable Profile and Competency Management System (PCMS), which is being developed supported by the ontology for profiles and competencies. An approach and mechanism for semi-automated derivation/discovery of elements for organization’s profile and competency from on-line text corpora is also introduced.