Organisational failures in dependable collaborative enterprise systems

Abstract

In this paper we attempt to classify organizational failures that can occur during the integration process of autonomous systems. The paper reports on ongoing research in the area of systems integration. Our purpose is to provide a taxonomy of organizational failures, so that there is a basis for analyzing some of the possible organizational failure modes resulting from putting together two organizational systems, each with its own purpose in its own organizational context, to make a new Dependable System of Systems. It thus provides a way of examining some new emergent failure modes. It also points out possible failure modes that, because they are organizational, cannot be prevented or tolerated at the level of the individual technical systems or the technical system that brings them together.