A Contract Negotiation Model for Constituent Systems in the Acquisition of Acknowledged System of Systems

In the acquisition of acknowledged system of systems (SoSs), the SoS manager attempts to reach a coalition agreement with each of selected constituent systems. When the systems have self-interests that are incompatible with the SoS's goal, contract negotiation is a way of resolving conflicts. Complexity of the acknowledged SoS acquisition makes the negotiation a hard decision process for constituent systems. To the SoS manager, the negotiation with consistent systems is difficult too, considering that the behavior and strategies of constituent systems in negotiation impact the ability and timeliness of a group to agree on an SoS architecture, and so the overall mission effectiveness of the SoS. Motivated by these, this paper develops a contract negotiation model for constituent systems in the acknowledged SoS acquisition. The model consists of: 1) a protocol for negotiating multiple interdependent issues of multiple items over multiple stages and 2) a decision framework of constituent systems. The model is not only a decision support for constituent systems but also a tool with which the SoS manager can better understand constituent systems.