Structure and action in distributed organizations

Abstract

An organization's structure specifies the formal relationships between the objects which comprise the organization. An organization's action is initiated by the communication of messages between the organizational objects. This paper describes some of the organization's structural relationships and message passing patterns. It also explores the relationship between structure and action. An organization is described using the Ubik system. Within this system, the organizational representation is specified using a distributed semantic net consisting of objects called configurators; the message passing action is based on the Actor model of parallel and distributed processing. The structure is related to the action by the use of special configurators called constructors, tapeworms, questers and sponsors. These configurators build, maintain, monitor and reason over the distributed networks.