=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2239/article_2
|storemode=property
|title=Modeling Communities in e3value
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2239/article_2.pdf
|volume=Vol-2239
|authors= Reshmi Sarkar,Jaap Gordijn
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/vmbo/SarkarG18
}}
==Modeling Communities in e3value==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2239/article_2.pdf
Modeling Communities in e3 value
Reshmi Sarkar and Jaap Gordijn
VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands
reshmi.sarkar@hotmail.com, j.gordijn@vu.nl
Abstract. Increasingly, communities play an important role in business
value models. However, in e3 value , there seems not to be a suitable con-
struct to model communities. In this paper, we propose an additional
concept that can be used for communities, namely the “group”. We il-
lustrate the use of this concept for understanding a business model in
the field of ICT4D (ICT for developing countries).
abstract environment.
Keywords: value modeling, community, ICT4D
1 Introduction
Over the past few years, we have encountered a number of times the need to
express communities in business value models. We loosely define the notion of
‘community’ as a set of actors who share goals and are organized in, often an
informal, structure. Other definitions of ‘community’ include ‘a group of people
with diverse characteristics who are linked by social ties, share common per-
spectives, and engage in joint action in geographical locations or settings’ [7] or
‘the gathering of vertices into groups such that there is a higher density of edges
within groups than between them’ [2]
Examples we have seen in our research are: (1) ICT for development (ICT4D):
a remote village that offers craft work and home stay to the outside world, (2)
open source software development, and (3) block chain applications for a limited
set of actors that share the same goals (e.g. doing business in an environmentally
friendly way).
All these examples have in common that the community itself has interesting
properties to model. In the case of ICT4D (see e.g. [6]), a remote village as a
whole offers service to the outside world, because the inhabitants could never
do that alone. In other words, they bundle forces. Open source developments
participants often share a website or other artifact that offers services for col-
laboration and for downloading source and binary code (e.g. a github project).
In block chain applications, there is the notion of ‘the network’ that does things
on behalf of the participating parties. For example, the Bitcoin network itself
has certain rules of engagement, including about how money is generated (the
so-called mining), and therefore should be considered as a (virtual) actor.
What do we want to express in a business value model about communities?
Based on the three examples mentioned earlier we should at least be capable to
represent that:
2 R. Sarkar, J. Gordijn
1. actors do value transfers with the community (e.g. a group of actors) rather
than with an individual;
2. the actors who are part of a community;
3. how financial effects of the community break down into the participating
actors according to a selection of rules (e.g. distribute revenue evenly).
The e3 value ontology [5] provides three constructs for modeling stakeholders
in a business value model, namely: (1) the actor : an economically and often
legally independent entity, (2) the market segment: a set of actors for which
each actor is supposed to assign economic value in the same way, and (3) the
composite actor : an actor (or market segment) for who individual value interfaces
are grouped into larger ones. The composite actor construct is used to model
that two or more actors offer products or services jointly as a bundle, for example
an electricity supplier and a company who distributes electricity. Jointly, they
provide electricity to the end-user.
The ‘actor’ concept models precisely one entity. A possibility could be to use a
single actor as a community (e.g. a village), and model all participants as separate
actors, each having value transfers with actor representing the community. From
a modeling perspective, this is not very practical, since this requires explicit
modeling of many similar actors, and thus does not scale up.
At first sight, the ‘market segment’ models multiple actors, and could poten-
tially be useful to represent communities. However, the semantics of a ‘market
segment’ means that if ‘value objects’ are transfered with a market segment,
one of the actors in the segment is chosen to trade with. In contrast, in case
of a community, we want to say that we want to transfer ‘value objects’ with
the community as a whole. Therefore, the market segment is not really suited
to model the notion of ‘community.
Finally, actor composition currently only has the semantics that two or more
actors are offering a complex service and/or product jointly, each focusing on
their own core competence. These cooperating actors could be somehow be con-
sidered as a community. However, there is subtle yet important difference be-
tween several actors (the ‘composite actor’) offering together a set of complex
products and/or services, also known as a bundle, and a single entity (the ‘com-
munity’) that offers a whole one or more products and/or services to the environ-
ment. For example, if we take just the simple example that a community offers
just one product (e.g. for money), this cannot be modeled by the ‘composite
actor’ construct, as the construct requires the bundling of at least two services
and/or products from different actors.
Therefore, in this paper, we propose a new construct, called the Group, with
set operators to model the (implicit) actors in the group. One of the use cases
for the ‘Group’ construct is to model communities.
This paper is structured as follows. In Sec. 2, we introduce a case study in
the field of ICT4D, called the Mali Milk service. This is one of the cases we
encountered the need for modeling a community. Sec. 3 presents a few attempts
to model the Mali Milk case with the existing set of e3 value constructs. As it
turns out, each solution has some drawbacks, Sec. 4 proposes a new e3 value
Modeling Communities in e3 value 3
model construct, namely the ‘Group’, to model communities. Finally, Sec. 5
presents key points and suggestions for further research.
2 The Mali Milk service
The Tominian Mali Milk service or m-Milk service [4] is a voice based milk
selling and farmer networking platform for Tominian Mali. The Tomanian milk
producers in Mali have two important problems. The first is a lack of channels
for facilitating buying and selling of milk, while the second is overproduction
of milk during a rainy season and underproduction during a dry season. The
first problem results in farmers having to sell milk from door to door whereas
the second problem leads to wastage of overproduced milk and expensive import
of milk during scarce production. One way of solving the two problems is by
having a dairy co-operative [3], in which all farmers are represented, and which
collects milk from farmers, pasteurize the collected milk and sell it in the market
accordingly. Pasteurizing the milk delays spoiling by four days approximately.
Yet loopholes in the co-operatives such as lack of prompt milk collection and
unreliable communication still loom over the success of the Co-operative.
The m-Milk service is a platform which facilitates communication between
local milk producers and potential buyers.This e-service platform enables the
farmer to call in the platform and leave a message about the milk available.
The potential buyers can call in and retrieve messages from the farmers along
with contact information of the farmer with milk for sale. Further, in an already
existing co-operative, the platform can be used to encourage more farmers to
join the Co-operative and facilitating efficient collection and selling of the milk.
In addition, in areas where there are no co-operatives, the farmers can commu-
nicate among themselves and organize pooling of milk and transport to a diary
producer.
The technology at place for providing communication between the farmers
and the potential buyers is a device called KasaDaka [1] along with a GSM/
GPRS dongle. It is a low-cost Raspberry Pi based system which has a low elec-
tricity consumption. Therefore, it is suitable in a ICT4D context. In order to
make the application able to receive calls, a dongle with a telephone SIM card is
inserted. The m-Milk service is compatible with the rural landscape of Mali and
requires the farmers and the buyers to have a basic mobile phone to call in to the
KasaDaka. The farmers can record their messages by calling into the KasaDaka
and the buyers can retrieve the messages in the same way. The KasaDaka could
be hosted by the Co-operative or by a farmer who does so for the Co-operative.
3 Alternative e3 value Models for m-Milk service
Two alternative e3 value models are constructed to represent the m-Milk ser-
vice. The first alternative models the Co-operative as a formal actor. This Co-
operative also hosts the Kasadaka, and therefore the e-service. In the second
4 R. Sarkar, J. Gordijn
alternative, the collaboration between farmers is considered as an informal orga-
nization, and therefore not considered as a formal e3 value actor. The Kasadaka
is hosted at a farmer.
3.1 Co-operative as a formal actor
Fig. 1. Co-operative as a formal actor
The e3 value model. Fig. 1 presents the e3 value model for the m-Milk service
hosted at the Co-operative. The dairy Co-operative hosts the KasaDaka system
and offers the m-Milk service to the farmers and the potential buyers in return
for increased sales. The farmers are encouraged to call in to the KasaDaka de-
vice to share their information regarding the availability of milk. By providing
the service for free to the farmers and the buyers, the Co-operative aims to in-
volve more farmers to sell their milk and more buyers to buy the milk from the
Co-operative which would result in increased sales for the Co-operative. Since
the KasaDaka is hosted at the Co-operative, the operational costs such as elec-
tricity is covered by the Co-operative (not modeled explicitly). The farmers and
the buyers pay the mobile phone provider for making calls to the application
(KasaDaka). The farmers record their calls with date and availability of milk.
The buyers call the KasaDaka to listen to the calls of the farmers. Finally, the
platform supplier offers the KasaDaka hardware in exchange for money.
Reflection. Does Fig. 1 model the case adequately? The co-operative is consid-
ered as a formal e3 value actor, e.g. an actor who is profit-and-less responsible
Modeling Communities in e3 value 5
and/or who is a legal entity. In some cases, this can be precisely the situation.
However, in many other cases in which communities play an important role, com-
munities are loosely coupled structures, e.g. without having any legal status. In
such a case, the actor construct would not be rightful. Secondly, the model does
not say that all farmers form the Co-operative. Apart from the fact this can
not be seen from the model, this also has implications for e.g. the calculation
of net value sheets. For example, a rule could be that at end of each year, the
earned money by the Co-operative is divided over the farmers. This can not be
represented in the current model.
3.2 Co-operative as market segment
Fig. 2. Co-operative as market segment
To show why a Co-operative cannot be modeled as a market segment, con-
sider Fig. 2. The group of farmers is modeled here as a market segment on pur-
pose. One or more farmers hosts the device at their place in exchange of money.
6 R. Sarkar, J. Gordijn
The hosting party (one or more farmers within the group) pays the maintenance
cost such as electricity. The group of farmers pay for the device itself, and for the
maintenance cost to the hosting farmer(s). The need annotated #1 shows that
a farmer who wants the m-Milk service (in return for increased sales on the long
term) has to obtain the service from the Farmer market segment, which repre-
sents the Co-operation. Similarly, the farmer sells milk to the market segment
(see #2).
Reflection. The model in Fig. 2 has a number of problems. First, ‘selling to
the market segment’ means in e3 value that one actor of the market segment is
chosen (e3 value does not state which specific actor is chosen; only that one actor
is chosen). So effectively, the path annotated with #1 represents that a farmer
is providing the m-Milk service to another actor. The same holds for path #2;
here the milk is not sold to all farmers, but just one specific actor. Second, paths
#1 and #2 may result in a cycle. Recall that formally, each e3 value model is an
a-cyclic directed graph. For example, path #2 may represent that a farmer sells
milk to him/herself. This is meaningless. Remember that value transfers to and
from market segment represent that a (random) actor in the market segment is
chosen to exchange value object with. Cycles are forbidden in e3 value because
(1) they are meaningless (it makes no sense to sell something to yourself), and
(2) in practice are often indications of fraud.
4 The Group as a new modeling construct
What we need is a specific construct to model a group. We define a group as a
set of actors who share goals and is visualized as in Fig. 3.
Fig. 3. Symbol representing the group
Fig. 2 which wrongly shows the m-Milk platform using the market segment,
is redesigned in Fig. 4 with the new group concept. The main difference is that
there is now a group of farmers, who cooperate. Value transfers are always with
the group, and not with a single actor in the group. Here, the group buys milk
from individual farmers, hence ‘farmer’ is modeled as a market segment. One of
the farmer acts as party for hosting the Kasadaka device. This farmer offers the
hosting service also to the group of farmers as a whole.
The revised models is an a-cyclic directed graph again, and therefore complies
with one of the modeling rules in e3 value . However, we still have to represent that
the farmers in a community are also in a market segment. To this purpose, we
Modeling Communities in e3 value 7
Fig. 4. m-Milk platform showing cooperating farmers as a group
introduce a new concept called set operator. It captures the relationship between
the two actor sets (e.g. a group and and a market segment). We use set operators
such as subset, superset, union and intersection for relationships between a group
and a market segment, between two groups, or between two market segments.
For instance, in Fig. 4, the group of cooperating farmers is a subset of the market
segment containing all farmers, thereby modeling that not all farmers have to
participate in the cooperation. Also, two or more different farmer groups might
unite to work together, hence an union operator is required to represent the
union of the two different groups. Therefore, the concept of subset, superset,
union and intersection has been introduced. The symbols corresponding to the
set operators are represented in figure 5. In case of subset or superset, the set
operator has a right actor set and a left actor set. In case of union, the set
operator has a right actor set and a left actor set which results in the formation
of a new actor set.
8 R. Sarkar, J. Gordijn
Fig. 5. Symbols corresponding to the set relationship
5 Key points and future work
Key points. In this paper, a new modeling construct, namely the emphgroup,
has been proposed as an extension to the existing e3 value methodology. The
difference between the group and the related construct market segment, is that
the ‘group’ models value transfers with a group of actors as a whole, whereas
transfers with a market segment result in the selection of a particular (random)
actor in the segment, therefore ultimately leading to transfers with one actor
in that segment. Additionally, we added set operations between groups, market
segments, and groups and market segments, to represent that actors participate
in (sub)sets of actors, either being groups or market segments.
Future work. An important feature of the e3 value modeling technique is net value
flow calculation. We have not studied the effect of the group concept on the net
value flow calculation algorithm yet. For now, we assumed that everyone in the
group gets an equal share which is unlikely in real world scenarios. In addition,
further research is needed how to model the internal structure of the group.
For instance, in the Milk service case, most likely an internal structure can be
discovered
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