#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 ...