The article considers the discourse surrounding culture change programmes in two British manufacturing organisations. The analysis of organisational discourse is pursued as a means of revealing the indeterminacy of organisational experiences and the problems inherent to the introduction of generic change approaches such as TQM (Total Quality Management) and BPR (Business Process Reengineering)....

OBJECTIVE to describe midwives' experiences of changes in their caring role and professional function in postpartum wards in the northern part of Sweden. In this part of the country, three out of eight maternity departments have been closed over the last 5 years. During the same period, hospital stays have reduced in length, and an early discharge model has been introduced. DESIGN focus-group...

Agent-based computing is becoming a popular tool for modelling, designing and implementing distributed systems. In the engineering of multi-agent systems both the analyst and architect may benefit by thinking about the solution in terms of the roles that agents may enact and the relationships between them. As in human organisations, roles and the relationships between them define expected behav...

Virtual organisations can be regarded as sets of roles that introduce normative directives for agents joining such organisations by adopting these roles. An agent in a specific role holds a set of obligations, permissions and prohibitions that govern its practical reasoning. In adopting such a role, it commits to fulfill its obligations. A specific problem poses organisational change. In such a...

This paper presents configuration to the contextual perspective specifically the context of change when implementing electronic government. Literature investigation has been indicated that change leaders and planners need to rethink on the traditional contextual theory with its classic dichotomy to the context of change as internal and external levels. An empirical case study will be applied to...

In the engineering of multi-agent systems both the analyst and architect may benefit by thinking about the solution in terms of the roles that agents may enact and the relationships between them. The organisational structure thus produced provides an effective way to capture mediumto long-term associations and dependencies between agents. In this paper we propose a means to formally specify, ve...

Top Library and Information Technology Association (LITA) experts, during a January 1999 American Library Association (ALA) Midwinter meeting, identified a number of important future trends for technologies in libraries1. Trend1 ”library users who use the Web, expect customisation, interactivity and customer support” deals directly with issues related to library portals. The group emphasised th...

In a dynamic world organisations have to change often. To enable organisations to change, certain structures and capabilities are needed. As all processes, a change process has to be organised itself. In this paper it is shown how within a formal organisation modelling approach also organisation change processes can be modelled. A generic organisation model (covering both organisation structure...

Information technology has long been recognised as a cause of organisational change. Recent developments in information technology (IT) media have stimulated considerable interest in how they will impact business organizations. Studies have largely examined the role that IT plays in improving information efficiency and synergies, in promoting collaboration and information sharing both inside an...