Change Management

#Griffith University, School of Computing and Information Technology,

Nathan (Brisbane) QLD 4111, Australia

*CSIRO Division of Manufacturing Science and Technology

Locked Bag 9, Preston (Melbourne), VIC 3072, Australia

Abstract: We investigate the management system of the enterprise as an agent maintaining a system of objectives. We then analyse the organisation as a set of individual autonomous co-operating agents so that agenthood of the entire enterprise becomes an emergent property of the organisation. Important questions include: under what condition can agenthood emerge? how to create such an organisation?, and how to guarantee that change preserves agenthood?.

Keywords: Enterprise integration, enterprise modelling, organisational factors

Introduction

It is increasingly important to devise faster and more reliable ways of designing purposeful, agile organisations (Bernus et al, 1997). We use the definition of the organisation as the human component of the enterprise, forming the human-organisational architecture (Williams, 1994).

An enterprise can be thought of as consisting of an operational and a decisional system (Doumeingts et al, 1998), each implemented partly by humans and partly by machines (Bernus and Nemes, 1994). We borrow the definition of the 'planning agent' from artificial intelligence to describe the desired quality of the organisation.

We demonstrate necessary conditions for the enterprise to behave as an agent, and also show the relationship of this view to concepts such as the fractal factory, holonic manufacturing, and others.

The organisation as an agent

Two crucial questions in organisational design are: 1) how to design the task structure of the enterprise to form a co-ordinated whole? and 2) what tasks allocation to humans (or groups) ensures that the enterprise will act to satisfy its objectives? The second question is typically not asked in business process engineering: it is assumed that the organisation will to what it is told to.

An organisation should conduct a system of activities managed and controlled to satisfy a set of organisational objectives. This requires purposeful behaviour so that the organisation can be characterised as a planning agent.

A planning agent determines a course of action to achieve its set of objectives. This course of action, or plan, is constrained by the agent's resources as well as the agent's own functional capabilities. The organisation follows, or appears to be following this plan while monitoring the effectiveness of the actions to actually satisfy the objectives for which the plan was made. If the plan fails in some way, then the plan or the objectives are modified. Enterprises are striving to achieve this ideal agent behaviour.

The system of objectives may be related to external relationships (satisfying customer demands, producing returns to investors,...), or internal ones (improving processes, co-ordination, resource usage,...). Simplified reference models for any organisation are shown in Fig.1 and in Fig.2. Notice that the model conforms to the simple view of systems utilised by control theory.

The operation of the organisation has an interface to the outside world through which consumed- and

Fig. 1 Reference model of an organisation (a simple GRAI model)

produced material and information services can flow while the management and control system has an information interface to the outside world.

The management system maintains a set of constrained objectives:

The management information flow between the organisation and the outside world partially determines what objectives are worth following, or realistic, e.g. what are the present or predicted needs, requirements, or orders to which the organisation should respond now or in the future;

Capabilities of the management and control system limit the ability of the organisation to commit to certain objectives, even if operational resources are otherwise present;

The material and information interfaces limit what is accessible for the organisation's resources and determine the feasibility of actual operations asopposed to potential ones;

Capabilities of the operational resources (usually called competencies) form a natural limit to the organisation's feasible objectives.

Autonomy and authority

In Fig. 3 the mechanism (resource) assigned to management and control is the same agent, which performs the operations. This is typical of e.g. biological organisms and reflects the organisation's ability to retain autonomy, operating and controlling itself at the same time. Also the organisation has the authority to commit its resources to objectives.

An autonomous individual agent therefore must co-ordinate its objectives and actions with other agents, and it must co-ordinate its own actions to satisfy its objectives under the negotiated conditions. This requires the agent to plan and control.

Fig. 2 Reference model of an organisation (in IDEF0) - including external interfaces

The internal co-ordination tasks are interrelated with the external ones given the need to rely on other agents. Thus an agent may give up some autonomy to achieve objectives otherwise outside its reach.

Since objectives are structured entities, agent negotiation may be performed on various levels of detail. E.g. a contingent strategy to act together may be agreed on, with the condition to find agreeable tactics, in turn contingent upon agreeable plans, etc.

Thus, based on negotiation protocols, agents can determine future joint action, and act on it.

The organisation as an emerging agent

Artificial organisations such as enterprises do not necessarily display the property of agenthood. For example, it is not automatically true that joint action on behalf of agents is necessarily satisfying some overall objective, or that joint action does not lead to some undesirable state. An important aim of enterprise integration