The ALPHA Theory: Understanding the Essence of Organisations

The ALPHA theory, or organisational essence theory, is a theory about the distinction of layers of transactor roles in an organisation, based on the sort of production that transactors bring about: original, informational, or documental. Original production comprises all production acts that result in original new facts. Examples are devising things, deciding and judging, as well as manufacturing, transporting, and observing things. Informational production acts comprise remembering, computing and deriving facts, and sharing (remembered or derived) facts. Documental production acts comprise saving, providing, and transforming documents or data (containing facts), as well as storing, retrieving, copying, transmitting, and destroying files. Accordingly, the organisation of an enterprise can be partitioned into three partial organisations: the O-organisation (O from original), the I-organisation (I from informational), and the D-organisation (D from documental). The I-organisation supports the O-organisation by means of informational services (remembering and sharing facts), and the D-organisation supports the I-organisation by means of documental services (saving and providing data or documents). Because original acts are the only acts that change the state of the ‘business’ world of an enterprise (i.e. the production world of its O-organisation), they must be performed by human actors. For informational and documental acts, it holds that they can be taken over by artefacts, notably ICT systems, including AI-artefacts (like logistic control systems and robots). However, as pointed out in the PSI theory, human actors are ultimately responsible and accountable for the acts of these artefacts. The ontological model of an enterprise’s O-organisation is called its essential model. Like every ontological model, it is abstracted from implementation, but it is also abstracted from realisation, that is, from the supporting I- and D-organisation. Yet it contains everything that is needed to understand the essence of an enterprise’s operation. In terms of size, that is, the amount of diagrams, text, etc., the essential model is less than 5% of a ‘normal’ complete model of an enterprise. So, the ALPHA theory contributes to the generic enterprise engineering goal of intellectual manageability by an unprecedented reduction of complexity. The ALPHA theory also clarifies that every enterprise information system (EIS) is nothing more or less than a part of I- and the D-organisation that support the O-organisation, only implemented by using ICT. Thus, the (functional) requirements for an EIS are contained in the essential model of the organisation.