Abstract
There is a well recognised need for a broad organisational perspective on information systems and the development of such systems. The paper elaborates on a perspective on organisations as practice systems. A generic model of organisational practice is presented. This model is theoretically grounded in a discussion on different organisational phenomena as knowledge, artefacts, signs, business processes and coordination. The model is a contextualised description of an organisational practice emphasising actors, actions, relationships and action objects (prerequisites/results). It recognizes different dimensions of organisational actions as vertical and horisontal coordination and horisontal transformation. One key concept in the model is organisational ability. Such an ability is said to consist of individual and intersubjective knowledge, artefacts and organisational descriptions (signs) as actable assets. Organisational learning through assimilating experiences from action is also recognized. The generic model can be used as a basis for making business definitions, which is considered to be of great importance in IS planning and IS development. An illustration of the use of a business definition is made from a case study on business and IS development in a municipal home care unit for elder people.
The updated original online version for this book can be found at DOI: 10.1007/978-0-387-35611-2_22
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Goldkuhl, G., Röstlinger, A., Braf, E. (2002). Organisations as Practice Systems. In: Liu, K., Clarke, R.J., Andersen, P.B., Stamper, R.K., Abou-Zeid, ES. (eds) Organizational Semiotics. IFIP — The International Federation for Information Processing, vol 94. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-35611-2_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-35611-2_4
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