Organisational dynamics, social norms and information systems

Abstract

An organisation is defined as a system of social norms. The concept of a norm is the social analogue of the concept of an affordance which Gibson (1968) introduced to account for perception of the physical world. Their conjunction is a logic of Norms and Affordances, Norma, which serves as a meta-model for dynamic organisational systems. All elements in a Norma model have bounded periods of existence. All the dynamics are specified by the authorities governing these bounds. A system to implement Norma has been constructed, called a 'Normbase' handles time intrinsically to achieve a huge reduction in the complexity of a specification. The Normbase allows a system to be prototyped dynamically, as the specification evolves. These methods have been used with great success in reducing implementation and maintenance costs.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>