Offices are open systems
ACM Transactions on Information SystemsPublished 1 July 1986Open access
Carl Hewitt
Citations344
SJR quartileQ1
SJR score1.54
SNIP2.78
Generate an AI Snapshot to get a quick, structured summary of this paper.
Study Snapshot
ObjectiveStudy objective
MethodsResearch methodology
PopulationPopulation studied
Sample sizeSample sizes
OutcomesStudy outcomes here
ResultsStudy results comes here
LimitationsResearch study limitations comes here
A concise AI-generated summary of the paper will appear here once you click Generate AI Snapshot.
TL;DR
This paper takes a prescriptive stance on how to establish the information-processing foundations for taking action and making decisions in office work from an open systems perspective and proposes due process as a central activity in organizational information processing.
Abstract
This paper is intended as a contribution to analysis of the implications of viewing offices as open systems. It takes a prescriptive stance on how to establish the information-processing foundations for taking action and making decisions in office work from an open systems perspective. We propose due process as a central activity in organizational information processing. Computer systems are beginning to play important roles in mediating the ongoing activities of organizations. We expect that these roles will gradually increase in importance as computer systems take on more of the authority and responsibility for ongoing activities. At the same time we expect computer systems to acquire more of the characteristics and structure of human organizations.
Keywords
Social SciencesEngineering
Elsevier eBooksA FRAMEWORK FOR REPRESENTING KNOWLEDGE
4,545 Citations1988Marvin Minsky
The enormous problem of the volume of background common sense knowledge required to understand even very simple natural language texts is discussed and it is suggested that networks of frames are a reasonable approach to represent such knowledge.
Artificial IntelligenceA logic for default reasoning
3,920 Citations1980Raymond Reiter
This paper proposes a logic for default reasoning, develops a complete proof theory and shows how to interface it with a top down resolution theorem prover, and provides criteria under which the revision of derived beliefs must be effected.
Munich Personal RePEc Archive (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich)Actors: A Model of Concurrent Computation in Distributed Systems
2,231 Citations1986Gul Agha
A foundational model of concurrency is developed and issues in the design of parallel systems and why the actor model is suitable for exploiting large-scale parallelism are addressed.
Artificial IntelligenceNegotiation as a metaphor for distributed problem solving
1,235 Citations1983Randall Davis, Reid G. Smith
A framework called the contract net is presented that specifies communication and control in a distributed problem solver, and comparisons with planner, conniver, hearsay-ii, and pup 6 are used to demonstrate that negotiation is a natural extension to the transfer of control mechanisms used in earlier problem-solving systems.
Artificial IntelligenceProlegomena to a theory of mechanized formal reasoning
368 Citations1980Richard W. Weyhrauch
This is an informal description of my ideas about using formal logic as a tool for reasoning systems using computers, illustrated by the features of FOL.
Analyzing due process in the workplace
333 Citations1986Elihu M. Gerson, Susan Leigh Star
An alternative approach based on the work of social scientists concerned with analyzing analogous problems in human organization is proposed, that is, reconciling incommensurate assumptions and procedures to the problem of due process.
ACM Transactions on Information SystemsAnalyzing due process in the workplace
329 Citations1986Elihu M. Gerson, Susan Leigh Star
This work proposes an alternative approach based on the work of social scientists concerned with analyzing analogous problems in human organization, which hinges on developing local closures to the problem faced by an organization.
IEEE Transactions on Systems Man and CyberneticsFunctionally Accurate, Cooperative Distributed Systems
309 Citations1981Victor Lesser, Daniel D. Corkill
A new approach for structuring distributed processing systems, called functionally accurate, cooperative (FA/C), is proposed, which differs from conventional ones in its emphasis on handling distribution-caused uncertainty and errors as an integral part of the network problem-solving process.
American Sociological ReviewOn "Quality of Life"
238 Citations1976Elihu M. Gerson
The 1970 Census of Population: Volume 1, Characteristics of the Population, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1973.
Social Studies of ScienceSimplification in Scientific Work: An Example from Neuroscience Research
208 Citations1983Susan Leigh Star
This paper examines the ways in which chains of inference are simplified at all stages of the research work, from research design and sampling to publication, to find out what constraints operate to make this deletion necessary.
International Joint Conference on Artificial IntelligencePLANNER: a language for proving theorems in robots
193 Citations1969Carl Hewitt
The deductive system of PLANNER is subordinate to the hierarchical control structure in order to make the language efficient and the use of a general purpose matching language makes the deductives system more powerful.
International Joint Conference on Artificial IntelligenceHierarchical planning in a distributed environment
143 Citations1979Daniel D. Corkill
A generalization of Sacerdoti's NOAH (Nets of Action Hierarchies) planning system is described, which involves distribution of NOAH's criticism and world model mechanisms.
AI MagazineMIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
103 Citations1980Berthold K. P. Horn, David Marr +5 more
The MIT AI Laboratory has a long tradition of research in most aspects of Artificial Intelligence, and the major foci include computer vision, manipulation, learning, English-language understanding, VLSI design, expert engineering problem solving, common-sense reasoning, computer architecture, distributed problem solve, models of human memory, programmer apprentices, and human education.
Artificial IntelligenceApplications of circumscription to formalizing common-sense knowledge
78 Citations1986John McCarthy
A new and more symmetric version of the circumscription method of nonmonotonic reasoning first described in (McCarthy 1980) and some applications to formalizing common sense knowledge are presented.
DSpace@MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)Analyzing the roles of descriptions and actions in open systems
33 Citations1983Carl Hewitt, Peter de Jong
It is concluded that descriptions and actions complement one another; neither being sufficient unto itself in large scale, open ended, geographically distributed, concurrent systems.
Elsevier eBooksFunctionally Accurate, Cooperative Distributed Systems
21 Citations1988Victor Lesser, Daniel D. Corkill
The social dynamics of routine computer use in complex organizations (work, management, sociology)
6 Citations1984Leslie George Gasser