Rights and Intentions in Value Modeling - Intentional Perspectives on Information Systems Engineering - page 197

3.2.3 Communicative Action
A communicative action is a joint action in which an actor communicates with one
or more other actors (taken from [ 12] , Sect. 3.1.3) .
A communicative action is a joint action where information is conveyed from
the speaker to the listener. It consists of one speaking action, where the speaker
states some content, and a listening action, where the listener acquires and under-
stands the content. While some communicative actions are carried out only with the
purpose of transferring information from the speaker to the hearer, many commu-
nicative actions also have additional purposes, as analyzed in speech act theory, [ 15] .
Some communicative actions are meant as requests for the listener to carry out some
action, while others are meant as promises by the speaker to carry out something. In
fact, some communicative acts may on the surface appear as pure assertions by the
speaker, while they actually carry another purpose such as a request. For example, if
someone states “it is cold in this room”, it may look like a straight-forward assertion
but is actually a request for the listener to close the open window in the room.
Some communicative actions may ultimately give rise to changes within a social
structure through modifying the relationships between actors in that structure or
their perceptions of the world. An example could be an employee placing a purchase
request to the purchasing department in a company. This request is a communicative
action but it will also result in an obligation for the purchasing department to fulfill
the request of the employee (given that certain conditions are fulfilled). Thus, the
employee's request changes the relationships in the enterprise. In order to clarify the
effects of communicative actions we introduce the notion of social action.
3.2.4 Social Action
A social action is a joint action that gives rise to social relationships (partially based
on [ 12] , Sect. 3.3) .
In the next section we will discuss social relationships in more detail, but
intuitively they consist of a number of components, including rights, obligations,
prohibitions, permissions, and expectations of behavior patterns. In this chapter,
we will focus on the formal aspects of social relationships, in particular rights.
Communicative actions and social actions are related as a communicative action
may count as a social action under certain circumstances. This means that when
two actors carry out a communicative action, they thereby also carry out a social
action. For example, when an employee places a purchase request to a purchasing
department, the two actors carry out a communicative action where the employee
informs the purchasing department about her need and asks the department to fulfill
it. Under certain circumstances (the employee is correctly authorized, the cost of the
request is within budget, etc.) this communicative act will also count as a social act
that gives rise to an obligation for the purchasing department to fulfill the request (a
social relationship). In this way, an action in one system can count as an action in
another system - changing the states of communicating actors can count as changes
within a social structure.