A theory-lead approach to cooperation support in enterprise modeling

摘要

Visual enterprise modeling is a cooperative activity, in which both graphical and natural languages are used to develop and advance common ground among members of a modeling team. The model created is an accumulation of the common ground reached and evolved in their cooperation process. This paper examines Herbert Clark's theory on language use and applies his Common Ground based approach to cooperation support in enterprise modeling. A Common Ground based framework for cooperative modeling is developed. A case study application of the theory and the framework is provided, which indicates that this theory-lead framework can help us describe communication and cooperation in enterprise modeling, to predict the kind of support we need for such activities, to guide the design of enterprise modeling systems, and to analyze and compare cooperation support in existing enterprise modeling systems.