Lily Sun

Norm-Based Agency for Designing Collaborative Information Systems

Abstract. Information systems are organizations in which signs are created, processed and consumed. In order to fulfil the organizational goals and objectives, its members must understand their responsibilities and authorities, and must act co‐operatively. The key to this organization and co‐ordination lies in norms, which define responsibilities and authorities for each human agent, and establish regularities of behaviour. In the context of co‐operative work, where ‘intelligent’ software agents are involved, to understand the norms of behaviour of various human agents becomes critical. Software agents can perform some tasks autonomously on the users behalf. Such delegation involves a set of complicated philosophical and legal issues. After discussion on delineation of various boundaries of responsibility and authorities, this paper addresses norms and normative behaviour of human agents within an organization. It discusses the taxonomies of norms and a method of norm specification, with examples. Finally it presents an approach of norm‐based agency for designing collaborative information systems and a case study of an insurance claim for illustration.

Modelling dynamic behaviour of business organisations—extension of DEMO from a semiotic perspective

An organisation is by virtue an information system, in which information is used for communication and coordination of activities. This information system is built upon the organisational infrastructure and is supposed to support the business processes. To study the organisational behaviour in the form of business processes, one needs an effective modelling method to capture dynamics of business processes. In this paper we introduce the DEMO methodology for organisational modelling. An extension of the methodology has been made by incorporating a semiotic method. DEMO is a cross-disciplinary theory for describing and explaining the action of organisations. It contains several model types, each expressed in a specific diagram. They collectively provide the necessary knowledge for information systems development and business process redesign. The process model of DEMO has been discussed in detail in this paper. A need for a facility in DEMO has been identified to formulize rules and conditions for optional and conditional actions. Towards this end, a semiotic method, namely NAM has been chosen as a complement to DEMO for this purpose. After producing process model in terms of DEMO, we use NAM to capture norms (e.g. rules, regulations and conditions). The norms determine the conditions and constrains in controlling optional and conditional actions. They govern the behaviour of actors (agents), normally to decide when certain actions are performed. Norms define clearly the roles, functions, responsibilities and authorities of the actors. The extended DEMO has been applied to a real-life problem for demonstration purposes.

Co-Design of Business and IT Systems—Introduction by Guest Editors

Informationtechnology(orIT)hasanimportantroletoplay in business organisations. The assumption that theuse of IT is necessary in any business is almost takenfor granted. It can be witnessed that continual invest-ments in IT have to be made to sustain the productivityin industry. However, it has been widely observed thatthere is often a gap between an operational IT systemand current business requirements in an organisation.An IT system, that at one time is highly supportive, af-teraninitialperiodoftime,couldimposeconstraintstobusiness operations, and could be regarded as a legacysystem. Such a problem may be caused by a number offactors. One is that IT systems and business processesarenottreatedasoneintegralunitandtheyaredesignedseparately. Calibration and adjustment of IT and busi-ness systems can overcome some of the problem, butsometimes more costly exercises such as process re-engineering or re-development of the IT system haveto be involved. Many research communities such ascomputing and management sciences have made greateffort in searching for a solution, through investigationof flexible architecture of IT systems, evolutionary in-formation systems and co-evolution of IT systems andbusiness processes.The co-design of business and IT systems is an ap-proach towards this direction. When an IT system isviewed as a part of the business organisation, and boththe IT and business systems are designed in the sametime, the gap between them can be minimised. Thisis a position taken by most of the authors in this spe-cial issue. In this paper, we shall first of all discuss themotivation of why the co-design is important, giventhe context of constant changes of IT functionality andbusinessrequirements.Weshallthenpresentaperspec-tivefortheco-designbyintroducingthetheoryofsemi-otics and presenting our arguments derived from thoseviewpoints. Highlights of the papers in this special is-suewillthenbepresented,followedbyconclusionsandfuture work.

Modelling complex systems for project planning - A semiotics motivated method

A large and complex IT project may involve multiple organizations and be constrained within a temporal period. An organization is a system comprising of people, activities, processes, information, resources and goals. Understanding and modelling such a project and its interrelationship with relevant organizations are essential for organizational project planning. This paper introduces the problem articulation method (PAM) as a semiotic method for organizational infrastructure modelling. PAM offers a suite of techniques, which enables the articulation of the business, technical and organizational requirements, delivering an infrastructural framework to support the organization. It works by eliciting and formalizing (e.g. processes, activities, relationships, responsibilities, communications, resources, agents, dependencies and constraints) and mapping these abstractions to represent the manifestation of the “actual” organization. Many analysts forgo organizational modelling methods and use localized ad hoc and point solutions, but this is not amenable for organizational infrastructures modelling. A case study of the infrared atmospheric sounding interferometer (IASI) will be used to demonstrate the applicability of PAM, and to examine its relevancy and significance in dealing with the innovation and changes in the organizations.

An ontological modelling of user requirements for personalised information provision

The knowledge economy offers opportunity to a broad and diverse community of information systems users to efficiently gain information and know-how for improving qualifications and enhancing productivity in the work place. Such demand will continue and users will frequently require optimised and personalised information content. The advancement of information technology and the wide dissemination of information endorse individual users when constructing new knowledge from their experience in the real-world context. However, a design of personalised information provision is challenging because users’ requirements and information provision specifications are complex in their representation. The existing methods are not able to effectively support this analysis process. This paper presents a mechanism which can holistically facilitate customisation of information provision based on individual users’ goals, level of knowledge and cognitive styles preferences. An ontology model with embedded norms represents the domain knowledge of information provision in a specific context where users’ needs can be articulated and represented in a user profile. These formal requirements can then be transformed onto information provision specifications which are used to discover suitable information content from repositories and pedagogically organise the selected content to meet the users’ needs. The method is provided with adaptability which enables an appropriate response to changes in users’ requirements during the process of acquiring knowledge and skills.

Knowledge Construction in E-Learning: Designing an E-Learning Environment

In the traditional classroom, students learned to depend on tutors for their motivation, direction, goal setting, progress monitoring, self-assessment, and achievement. A fundamental limitation is that students have little opportunity to conduct and manage their learning activities which are important for knowledge construction. e-Learning approaches and applications which are supported by pervasive technologies, have brought in great benefits to the whole society, meanwhile it also has raised many challenging questions. One of the issues that researchers and educators are fully aware is that technologies cannot drive a courseware design for e-Learning. An effective and quality learning requires an employment of appropriate learning theory and paradigms, organisation of contents, as well as methods and techniques of delivery. This paper will introduce our research work in design an e-Learning environment with emphases on instructional design of courseware for e-learning.

Articulation of information requirements for personalised knowledge construction

The quality of information provision influences considerably knowledge construction driven by individual users’ needs. In the design of information systems for e-learning, personal information requirements should be incorporated to determine a selection of suitable learning content, instructive sequencing for learning content, and effective presentation of learning content. This is considered as an important part of instructional design for a personalised information package. The current research reveals that there is a lack of means by which individual users’ information requirements can be effectively incorporated to support personal knowledge construction. This paper presents a method which enables an articulation of users’ requirements based on the rooted learning theories and requirements engineering paradigms. The user’s information requirements can be systematically encapsulated in a user profile (i.e. user requirements space), and further transformed onto instructional design specifications (i.e. information space). These two spaces allow the discovering of information requirements patterns for self-maintaining and self-adapting personalisation that enhance experience in the knowledge construction process.

Articulation of Learners Requirements for Personalised Instructional Design in e-Learning Services

As e-Learning environments evolve, learners have become increasingly demanding on personalised learning which allows them to build their own knowledge pathway. This significant change in learning requirements imposes a new learning paradigm which ensures one-to-one learning with flexible mode of content configuration, and adaptive delivery and assessment. Although in the past years, Learning Management Systems (LMS) providers have upgraded system functionality to support instructional design for e-learning package, incorporating individual learners’ personal learning requirements in content design still remains challenging. To involve learners in the content design requires identification of their personal learning requirements. This paper presents a method for articulating individual learners’ learning requirements (e.g., learning styles, and prior knowledge), and representing them in a set of computable parameters in Learner’s Profile. These parameters will then be mapped onto instructional design strategies which determine a selection of suitable learning content and sequencing of content with adequate instruction in a learning package.

A design of business-technology alignment consulting framework

Current work on applying scientific methods to capture the cultural values as requirements for business-IT alignment has been scarce, even though organisations acknowledge its significant impact. This paper introduces a Business-Technology Alignment Consulting Framework that adopts an Organisational Semiotics approach to capture cultural values from both formal norms and informal hidden social norms that can significantly impact the actual vs perceived alignment. A set of techniques in the framework are described for its use in conducting consulting analysis. Business Service Analysis is the core analysis that provides the holistic structure of the business services. Business Service Valuation calculates the service cultural values to complement the Business Service Analysis. Business Service Norms Analysis captures the business norms that govern the business service. A case study example is used to illustrate the analysis templates to holistically represent the business services. The significance of the consulting framework and future work are also discussed.

A method for interactive articulation of information requirements for strategic decision support

Abstract Decision support for strategic management, an extension to the traditional decision support systems, has been seen as an important area of research where the theory, methods and technologies can bring in a great deal of benefit to the whole enterprise at the executive level. The work in the paper first of all examines two paradigms of information provision for strategic decision support. The information requirements for decision-making are studied to reveal that the level of detail, granularity, format of presentation, and broad range of information type are unique for the applications at the strategic level. The provision of relevant information involves articulation of requirements based on the decision problems described by the executive manager. Secondly, this paper presents the MITAIS approach that allows the user to describe a decision problem interactively and assists articulation of the problem into a presentation in a decision space, by prompting possible patterns of decision dimensions. It further assists a configuration of information requirements into an information space, which covers the information required for the identified problem. MITAIS comprises a set of techniques to support articulation of a decision problem into a decision space, configuration of information space and the mapping between these two spaces. A case study has been used throughout the paper to illustrate the method. A critical evaluation of the development of MITAIS has been carried out to assess the validity of the research. Finally, the paper is concluded with suggestions for future work.