How to Make Use of Rea Questions from CSCW and HCI when operationalizing the REA ontology

Few studies from CSCW or HCI address ERP systems or other software used to integrate and monitor production processes. However, as ERP systems are software to be used to support and monitor highly co-operative efforts of producing and selling goods, and as the management and control of these processes is also a co-operative activity, results from this area might give indications for improvements. This position paper explores a set of questions regarding the embedment of ERP systems and especially a yet fictive one based on the REA ontology into the dynamics of everyday work in. Introduction This position paper is about operationalizing REA not only for analysis and knowledge management [7] but also as a meta-model for a fictive enterprise resource management system. ERP systems are highly adaptable and tailorable software systems. However, in the ERP literature, the subject of configuring and tailoring is normally discussed as a problem. The more the system has to be adapted to the specific organization the greater the risk for failure for the return of investment. [5, 2] On the other hand the implementation of ERP is understood and treated as streamlining the organization under development to fit with the practices supported by the specific ERP. One of the reasons for this mismatch between the implemented flexibility and the needs of different organization might be the fact that ERP systems historically developed ‘inside-out’ integrating different modules that in themselves where developed as stand alone software, addressing the specific sub-domain instead of implementing a more abstract model. [9] Building an ERP system on a simple but powerful meta-model for accountancy like the REA ontology might allow to support a variety of business practices with the same basic idea about accounting and management. If the model is powerful enough to accommodate different business areas and developments within the business as well as each company, it might be a good base to accommodate fitting degrees and dimensions of variability. Designing what should be adaptable by whom, and what kinds of interfaces are suitable to support the tailoring is not a trivial task. It should be based on thorough knowledge of the application domains and the work practices that should be supported, and the design of the variability is tightly coupled with the underlying architecture decisions. [4] Research on tailoring or end-user development has so far not addressed the adaptation of enterprise resource planning systems. (Though it is mentioned in [13] as a very promising application area.) The reason for this might have been that the de-facto