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Business Administration, Management, and Operations

The University of San Francisco

Selected Works

Work system theory

Publication Year

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Full-Text Articles in Business

A Work System Front End For Object-Oriented Analysis And Des, Steven Alter Jan 2012

A Work System Front End For Object-Oriented Analysis And Des, Steven Alter

Steven Alter

This paper proposes that basic ideas from the work system theory (WST) and the work system method (WSM) might become a front end to object-oriented analysis and design (OOAD). After describing the background motivation and summarizing work system concepts, it uses a hiring system example to show how two tools from WSM can be used as a front end for OOAD, in effect, a step before creating use case diagrams. Potential benefits of this approach stem from a business-oriented question, "how can we improve this work system's performance," rather than an IT-oriented question, "how can we create an IT artifact …


Exploring The Temporal Nature Of Sociomateriality From A Work System Perspective, Steven Alter Jan 2012

Exploring The Temporal Nature Of Sociomateriality From A Work System Perspective, Steven Alter

Steven Alter

This paper uses work system theory (WST) to explore the temporal nature of sociomateriality. It summarizes concepts related to WST and sociomateriality, and notes sociomaterial aspects of WST. It uses static and dynamic views of a work system toexamine six examples that can be classified in one of three time frames, minutes-to-hours, days-to-weeks, and months-to years. The result is a straightforward interpretation of systems and related events across all of the time frames, which exhibit different types of phenomena related to adaptations, workarounds, emergence of informal work patterns, and sequences of formal projects. After approaching sociomateriality from a perspective not …


Using Work System Theory To Achieve Greater Business Value From Erp By Exploring Alternative Design Spaces, Steven Alter Jan 2011

Using Work System Theory To Achieve Greater Business Value From Erp By Exploring Alternative Design Spaces, Steven Alter

Steven Alter

This paper explains how various aspects of work system theory (WST) can be applied to achieve greater business value from ERP by assuming that the underlying "design spaces" encompass much more than the features, configuration, and limitations of ERP software. It uses WST concepts to identify directions for achieving business value that might not be considered thoroughly in ERP implementations that focus primarily on converting from legacy software to ERP software. This paper starts by summarizing basic premises concerning the relationship between work systems and ERP. Focusing on the context of ERP usage, it explains the elements of the two …