Linking Intention and Processes in Organizations

Abstract

This chapter addresses how the intention of an agent responsible for an instance of a pattern of behaviour determines the processes by which the instance is started or finished.

An organization may be modelled using the concepts of Semantic Analysis which determine the relationships between agents and affordances — the patterns of behaviour available to the agents. These relationships may be represented in an ontological schema. A particular, the individual occurrence of affordance, is started and finished by processes resulting from communicative acts on the part of an agent

This chapter considers how the norms which initiate the processes leading to the start or finish of particulars may be triggered by substantive or communicative acts committed by or on behalf of an agent. In authorising the commitment of the act the agent has some intention to achieve something, the completion of a specific process. Different intentions on the part of authorising agents lead to triggering different norms and initiating different processes.

Modelling norms and processes which derive from different intentions recorded in communicative acts has two benefits. First it assists in the provision of semantic understanding of an organization; secondly it enables the model to incorporate changes to the organization in the form of changes to single rules or norms by which particulars may start or to complete changes in the affordances available to the agents.

The aim of the chapter is to demonstrate how the different intentions of the authorities initiating the start or finish of a particular may be used to define which norms and processes are selected to execute the start or finish. The concepts presented in this chapter are illustrated using an example of a library where members may borrow books or ‘reserve’ books with the intention of borrowing when the book is available.