Rights and Intentions in Value Modeling - Intentional Perspectives on Information Systems Engineering - page 191

Rights and Intentions in Value Modeling

Paul Johannesson and Maria Bergholtz

Abstract In order to manage increasingly complex business and IT environments,
organizations need effective instruments for representing and understanding this
complexity. Essential among these instruments are enterprise models, i.e. com-
putational representations of the structure, processes, information, resources, and
intentions of organizations. One important class of enterprise models are value
models, which focus on the business motivations and intentions behind business
processes and describe them in terms of high level notions like actors, resources,
and value exchanges. The essence of these value exchanges is often taken to be an
ownership transfer. However, some value exchanges cannot be analyzed in this way,
e.g. the use of a service does not influence ownership. The goal of this chapter is to
offer an analysis of the notion of value exchanges, based on Hohfeld's classification
of rights, and to propose notation and practical modeling guidelines that make use
of this analysis.

1 Introduction

In order to manage increasingly complex business and IT environments, organi-
zations need effective instruments for understanding their internal operations and
strategies as well as their external interactions. Essential among these instruments
are enterprise models, i.e. computational representations of the structure, processes,
information, resources, and intentions of organizations. Enterprise models may be
created on varying levels of abstraction depending on their purpose. A high level
of abstraction can be achieved in different ways, e.g. by focusing on essential
communicative acts [ 2] rather than specific message exchanges, by investigating
commitments and obligations [ 11] rather than the way these are fulfilled, or by