Information Modeling of Organizations

This book is about the information modeling of organizations in the widest sense possible. This term express the general meaning of the term "organizational modeling" with the light flavor of informatics practices rather than just the IS or IT view of the organization. Although the topic of the cognition of organizational structure and behavior traditionally belongs to the management theory; informatics brings to this area the necessary exactness in the shape of formal specifications and a systemic style of thinking. Informatics is a source of sophisticated techniques and tools, aimed on discovering the general regularities of the organizational structure and behavior (often called "business rules") with the ability to abstract all non-contentual aspects of the organizational system. Information technology, on the other hand, is a key enabler of organizational changes as it is established in all literature mentioning the theory of business reengineering. Consequently, the well designed Information System must be a clear picture of all substantial aspects of the organization (both the structural and the behavioral ones). Information modeling aims to create the view of the organization which is, on the one hand independent of any non-contentual aspect (including the information technology at first); on the other it is fully consistent with following the process of the development of the Information System (i.e., the infrastructure in general). The book introduces the methodology for modeling the business system based on two complementary views which covers both ontology and business process model of the organization using standard languages UML and BPMN and including tools for ensuring the consistency of both models. The book also outlines the original methodology for service-oriented building of the process managed organization and discusses the problem of the process-oriented management in the field of public administration.