Model-enabled design and engineering of organisations and their enterprises

Abstract

This editorial is concerned with the need for an integrated approach to the design and engineering of organisations and their enterprises. Organisational Design originates from the organisational sciences, while the notion of Enterprise Engineering results from the engineering sciences (most notably information systems engineering, business (process) engineering, business process optimisation, and enterprise architecture). The Organisational Design and Enterprise Engineering journal (OD&EE) is built on the premise that there should not be an "either-or" relation between Organisational Design and Enterprise Engineering, but rather an integrated approach that brings out the best of the two. A driver for the creation of the journal was the observation that the "either-or" mindset was (and still is) a major obstacle to the development of organisational thinking, and that this artificial divide must be abolished. In achieving more integration between Organisational Design and Enterprise Engineering, we suggest to take a model-enabled approach, where models should act as boundary objects between the social processes involved in organisational design processes, This editorial paper is discussed in comments available at doi:10. 1007/s41251-016-0001-0, doi:10.1007/s41251-016-0002-z, doi:10. 1007/s41251-016-0004-x, doi:10.1007/s41251-016-0006-8, doi:10. 1007/s41251-016-0007-7.

Model enablement in organizational design and enterprise engineering: the why, the how and the what

“…value propositions, business processes, stakeholder goals, information systems, etc." and should "provide insight into the existing situation, the direction in which the organization is moving, as well as the articulation of the desired future situation and direction", thereby enabling informed interactions "by all those who are involved in the design processes" [13]. Since one specific model or model type cannot meet all these requirements, the enterprise modelling discipline and its neighbouring disciplines have proposed a large set of models and model types.…”

“…In their editorial paper on the launch of this journal, Magalhães and Proper [13] define "Organisational Design & Enterprise Engineering" (OD&EE) as "application of social science, organisation science, communication science and computer science research and practice to the study and implementation of new organisational designs, including the This comment refers to the editorial paper available at doi:10.1007/s41251-016-0005-9.…”

Organizations (and organizing) are a technology that humans know very little about

“…As reported by [14], traditional writings on organisational design (e.g., Taylor, Fayol, Weber) were greatly inspired by a positivist epistemology, which is not surprising given the popularity of logical positivism and postpositivism at the turn of the 20th century. Consequently, this early heritage of organisational design implicitly promoted a mechanistic appreciation of organisations; in other words, organisation have been perceived as things that can be understood, built, and optimised like all other things that humans have created, such as machines [15].…”

“…With the advent of modern communication technologies, the boundaries of organizations are disappearing, resulting in boundaryless organisations [17], and organizations are no longer view as "isolated islands" but rather as integral actors within complex networks, that is as networked organizations [3]. Moreover, as proposed by [14], the concept of ActorWebs is currently emerging as the reality of tomorrow, a reality were social-cyber-physical systems are the norm and not the exception.…”

“…As stated by [14], the OD&EE journal addresses the development of an emerging field of knowledge defined as the application of social science, organisation science, communication science and computer science research and practice to the study and implementation of new organisational designs, including the integrated structuring, modelling, development and deployment of IS/IT and social processes.…”