Using a Language Action Framework to Extend Organizational Process Modelling

In this paper we explore the possibility of using a language action perspective to extend an analysis of organizational processes based on role activity diagramming (RAD). We have previously used role activity diagramming to show the large scale communication flows in an organizational domain and wanted to apply a language action approach to arrive at a finer level of detail for particular interaction sequences. An analytical and modelling approach derived from Winograd & Flores’s ideas about ‘conversations for action’ (CfA) is used to reveal and consider some of the inner dynamics of interaction. The CfA approach could be beneficially re-founded on a Habermasian base to bring out better the participative nature of interaction. This kind of modelling will be a useful supplement to RAD modelling and could perhaps form part of a more generalized exchange model for organizational processes.