Coordination and agent technology in value networks

New approaches and technologies are required to coordinate the interdependent interests of economic entities. Distributed decision making and self-organization become increasingly important where hierarchical planning reaches its limits. Therefore, innovative solutions have to face those challenges allowing especially for coordination and information processsing between distributed entities. In particular market-based coordination mechanisms provide this opportunity; they can be efficiently combined with powerful technologies like software agents to build the flexible coordination infrastructures for today's and tomorrow's electronic business. Science and industry will have to collaborate. Not only to identify the challenges of the prospering information society and to bring them onto our research agendas. Consequently, the book at hand is targeted towards scientists and practitioners likewise.