A 'context-aware' and agent-centric perspective for the alignment between individuals and organizations

Abstract

The enterprise modeling field aims at representing organizations from several, inter-related perspectives. A number of enterprise modeling frameworks have been developed providing models, methods and tools that enable to communicate the structure and processes of organizations. These frameworks have been used both for systems development and organizational analysis ends, where the latter mainly focuses process (re)design efforts. We argue that enterprise modeling frameworks can be used for other kinds of organizational analysis. In particular, they can be used to capture and model work practices, human multitasking at work, and to compare models describing pre-defined behavior with actual execution. However, current enterprise modeling frameworks have several limitations in modeling human agents. First, these frameworks model generic behavior rather than behavior of specific individuals or groups. Second, they do not acknowledge the complex, situated and adaptive nature of human behavior. Third, these frameworks provide 'aerial' representations that ignore the process required to align the different and inconsistent views that human agents frequently have of the organization. In this paper we (1) argue the importance of an agent perspective to align individual and collective views of the organization; (2) describe an ontology of organizational agents and contexts to overcome current limitations in modeling human agents; and (3) show the ontology benefits for organizational analysis ends, with results from case studies in real organizational settings. The ontology is part of a broader conceptual framework for the alignment between individuals and organizations, and provides an agent-centric and 'context-aware' perspective of the organization complementary to existing perspectives of enterprise modeling frameworks. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.