Modeling discourse in collaborative work support systems: a knowledge representation and configuration perspective

Collaborative work processes usually raise a lot of intricate debates and negotiations among participants, whereas conflicts of interest are inevitable and support for achieving consensus and compromise is required. Individual contributions, brought up by parties with different backgrounds and interests, need to be appropriately structured and maintained. This paper presents a model of discourse acts that participants use to communicate their attitudes to each other, or affect the attitudes of others, in such environments. The first part deals with the knowledge representation and communication aspects of the problem, while the second one—in the context of an already implemented system, namely HERMES—with issues related to the configuration of the contributions asserted at each discourse instance. The overall work focuses on the machinery needed in a computer-assisted collaborative work environment, the aim being to further enhance the human–computer interaction.