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3.3.3 Right
A right is either a claim, a privilege, a power, or an immunity as defined by Hohfeld,
see Sect. 2. A privilege or a claim may concern some resource or action, while
a power and immunity concern a relationship i.e. power is the right to modify or
create a social relationship, while immunity is the right (for an actor) to be excluded
from certain social relationships.
An example of these notions is a purchase order (a social relationship) in which
the buyer (a role) has a claim (a right) on the supplier (a role) to deliver some product
(an action) and the supplier has a claim (a right) on the supplier to pay for the
product (an action). Two important types of social relationships are commitments
and ownerships.
3.3.4 Commitment
A commitment is a relationship between two actors where the rights involved in the
relationship primarily consist of a claim, where one actor is obliged to carry out
some action for another actor. In other words, one actor is committed to carry out
some action for the benefit of another actor.
3.3.5 Ownership
An ownership is a social relationship between an actor and a social structure where
the rights pertain to some resource. The rights involved in an ownership are primar-
ily privileges (the actor is allowed to carry out certain actions on a resource without
any interference from the social structure) and powers (an actor is entitled to cre-
ate or modify a social relationship). An example is that a person owning a book
has the right to read the topic and even destroy it but also the right to transfer the
ownership to someone else by giving the topic away, thereby terminating one social
relationship and creating another.
3.3.6 Authority
Authority is the right to act as agent on behalf of an organization or another person
(taken from [ 12] , Sect. 3.2.1) .
If an actor has the correct authority, some of its actions will count as actions of
the organization for which it acts. For example, if an employee at a company writes
out a check, it will count as a payment by the company if the employee is correctly
authorized.
3.3.7 Resource
A resource is any entity of some perceived value that has identity (taken from [ 12] ,
Sect. 3.3.3) . A resource type describes categories of resources.
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