A conceptual model of an interorganizational intelligent meeting-scheduler (IIMS)

This article proposes and evaluates a comprehensive agent-based architecture for an Interorganizational Intelligent Meeting-Scheduler. The article extends and generalizes the Intelligent Meeting-Scheduler conceptual model [EXPERSYS 95-Proc. Seventh Intl Conf. Artificial Intelligence Expert Syst. Appl. (1995) 279; J. Organizational Comput. Electron. Commerce, 9 (1999) 233] which focused on intraorganizational meeting scenarios. First, the article reviews several academic meeting-scheduling prototypes and commercial software packages. Based on this review, it is demonstrated that only an integrated approach that supports interoperability in all three dimensions of the meeting-scheduling problem (calendar, scheduling, and communication-management) can succeed in achieving interoperability among heterogeneous calendar and scheduling systems. The next part of the article provides a specification of an agent-based system that attempts to address the interoperability challenge. The specification comprises of the following elements: environment, behaviors, symbol-level, and knowledge-level architectures [IEEE Trans. Syst., Man, Cybernet. 25 (1995) 852]. The inter-organizational meeting-scheduling process is articulated as an iterative negotiation process where knowledge and symbol level units ('the IIMS system') interact with the system's end-users ('the environment') by exhibiting behaviors that address end-user requirements. The IIMS conceptual model is evaluated empirically and related to relevant literature on adoption difficulties of inter-organizational systems. It is evident that the IIMS faces a plethora of technological, organizational, sociological, behavioral, and psychological challenges that hinder its successful adoption. The article proposes several implementation tactics and guidelines in order to overcome these obstacles.