Towards multi-stakeholder value/quality conflict detection, measurement and resolution in composite services

Min Li, Zhiying Tu, Hanchuan Xu, Xiaofei Xu, Zhongjie Wang

Abstract: The composite service is a popular service paradigm, in which service providers from various fields establish cooperative relationships for capability complementarity and value co-creation. However, due to the complex dependences on service value-quality-capability among multiple participants, conflicts are inevitable. In the past, most researches on composite service optimization only considered a few low-level technical indicators and assumed that there was not any objection from multiple participants on the service optimization objectives. These methods are not appropriate for conflict resolution that focuses on upper-level business indicators and more complex dependences. Because of different individual standpoints, the service objectives of each stakeholder are generally different or even exclusive. This paper proposes conflict detection, measurement and resolution methods for multiple stakeholders. Conflicts are detected by comparing the gaps between the original expectations of each stakeholder and the realizations after multi-participant dependences. Conflicts are measured based on the similarity and relative advantage of ternary interval numbers. Then, conflicts are sequentially resolved in descending order of conflict levels calculated according to conflict association complexities in the dependence network. During the global optimization of composite services, this paper introduces optimization costs and benefits to update the dominance of candidates to ensure fairness for multiple stakeholders. Finally, through a case study of rural e-commerce, this paper analyzes the performances of the proposed methods in the efficiency of conflict resolution and the fairness of composite service optimization. The methods in this paper are helpful to eliminate interest conflicts of multiple stakeholders and seek a multi-party win-win configuration in the early integration stage of the composite service.