ARGUMENTATION AND CONTRACT-MODELS FOR STRATEGIC ORGANIZATION SUPPORT SYSTEMS

Strategic organizational support systems enable and support unstructur ed reasoning and communication within organizations. Such argumentatio n-based unstructured transactions can be used to continuously maintain a cognitive model of the organization. The model can be subjected to a prescriptive theory, in order to diagnose good and bad patterns in o rganizational cognition. Because semi-autonomous groups need to form a nd then dissolve when tasks have been completed, the relationship betw een group members (who may be inside or outside the organization) can be formalized by means of contracts. Such contracts initiate changes t o the organization's business model. Contracts are monitored in order to enable adequate supervision and control to be exercised. A business model enables users to seek the organization's goals via a number of functions, such as policy making and plan making. An organizational in terface controls when collaboration takes place (via argumentation, co ntracting, or other communicative acts). Senior managers spend most of their time collaborating on a large number of unscheduled tasks, and so a collaboration context model provides graceful engagement and dise ngagement using information about sender, receiver, message and task.