Supervised interaction: Creating a web of trust for contracting agents in electronic environments

Supervised interaction is concerned with the problem of establishing trust between contracting agents in electronic markets. Agents act as representatives of their organisations or of individuals, negotiate contracts for the supply of goods and services and manage their delivery. It is essential for the automation of business transactions to put safeguards in place that ensure that errant behaviour is either prevented or sanctioned. The model proposed in the paper – Supervised Interaction – consists of three elements: an organisational framework, a contract specification language and a contract management protocol. The organisational framework emphasises the importance of introducing a trusted third party into any automated business transaction. Three essential roles are, therefore, proposed: the addressee, counter-party and authority. The normative positions of the agents involved in an automated business transaction are explicitly expressed within the contracts that govern agents’ behaviour during supervised interaction. This interaction model is designed to provide the web of trust necessary for successful deployment of agent-mediated electronic markets