Models for supporting the redesign of organizational work

Abstract

Many types of models have been proposed for supporting organizational work. In this paper, we consider models that are used for supporting the redesign of organizational work. These models are used to help discover opportunities for improvements in organizations, introducing information technologies where appropriate. To support the redesign of organizational work, models are needed for describing work configurations, and for identifying issues, exploring alternatives, and evaluating them. Several approaches are presented and compared. The i* framework — consisting of the Strategic Dependency and Strategic Rationale models — is discussed in some detail, as it is expressly designed for modelling and redesigning organizational work. We argue that models which view organizational participants as intentional actors with motivations and intents, and abilities and commitments, are needed to provide richer representations of organizational work to support its effective redesign. The redesign of a bank loan operation is used as illustration.