#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 to form a co-ordinated whole? and 2) what tasks allocation to humans (or
groups) ensures that the enterprise will act to satisfy its objectives? The second question is
typically not asked in business process engineering: it is assumed that the organisation will
to what it is told to.
An organisation should conduct a system of activities managed and controlled to satisfy a
set of organisational objectives. This requires purposeful behaviour so that the organisation
can be characterised as a planning agent.
A planning agent determines a course of action to achieve its set of objectives. This course
of action, or plan, is constrained by the agents resources as well as the agents own
functional capabilities. The organisation follows, or appears to be following this plan while
monitoring the effectiveness of the actions to actually satisfy the objectives for which the
plan was made. If the plan fails in some way, then the plan or the objectives are modified.
Enterprises are striving to achieve this ideal agent behaviour.
The system of objectives may be related to external relationships (satisfying customer
demands, producing returns to investors,), or internal ones (improving processes,
co-ordination, resource usage,). Simplified reference models for any organisation are
shown in Fig.1 and in Fig.2. Notice that the model conforms to the simple view of systems
utilised by control theory.
The operation of the organisation has an interface to the outside world through which
consumed- and
Fig. 1 Reference model of an organisation (a simple GRAI model)
produced material and information services can flow while the management and control
system has an information interface to the outside world.
The management system maintains a set of constrained objectives:
The management information flow between the organisation and the outside world
partially determines what objectives are worth following, or realistic, e.g. what are the
present or predicted needs, requirements, or orders to which the organisation should
respond now or in the future;
Capabilities of the management and control system limit the ability of the organisation to
commit to certain objectives, even if operational resources are otherwise present;
The material and information interfaces limit what is accessible for the organisations
resources and determine the feasibility of actual operations asopposed to potential ones;
Capabilities of the operational resources (usually called competencies) form a natural limit
to the organisations feasible objectives.
Autonomy and authority
In Fig. 3 the mechanism (resource) assigned to management and control is the same agent,
which performs the operations. This is typical of e.g. biological organisms and reflects the
organisations ability to retain autonomy, operating and controlling itself at the same time.
Also the organisation has the authority to commit its resources to objectives.
An autonomous individual agent therefore must co-ordinate its objectives and actions with
other agents, and it must co-ordinate its own actions to satisfy its objectives under the
negotiated conditions. This requires the agent to plan and control.
Fig. 2 Reference model of an organisation (in IDEF0) – including external interfaces
The internal co-ordination tasks are interrelated with the external ones given the need to
rely on other agents. Thus an agent may give up some autonomy to achieve objectives
otherwise outside its reach.
Since objectives are structured entities, agent negotiation may be performed on various
levels of detail. E.g. a contingent strategy to act together may be agreed on, with the
condition to find agreeable tactics, in turn contingent upon agreeable plans, etc.
Thus, based on negotiation protocols, agents can determine future joint action, and act on
it.
The organisation as an emerging agent
Artificial organisations such as enterprises do not necessarily display the property of
agenthood. For example, it is not automatically true that joint action on behalf of agents is
necessarily satisfying some overall objective, or that joint action does not lead to some
undesirable state. An important aim of enterprise integration is to build enterprises that do
behave as agents. Therefore we analyse the conditions under which agent behaviour does
emerge from joint action of agents.
The organisation as an agent consists of a set of agents (Fig 3), thus organisational design
is the art of creating agents out of agents. Each agent may
Fig. 3 Multiple agents in the organisation
