Continuing the dialogue: Generic layers for business interaction

Understanding the business of organizations is a crucial point for developing good information systems supporting the organizations. Different generic business models have been developed based on the language action perspective. There are the models of Action Workflow (Medina-Mora et al, 1992; Denning & Medina-Mora, 1995), DEMO (Dietz, 1999) and BAT (Goldkuhl 1996; 1998). Inspired by these different models, Hans Weigand and his colleagues developed a layered pattern architecture where they tried to incorporate different constructs from the models mentioned above (Weigand et al, 1998). We found their layered model interesting and promising, but containing some conceptual obscurities. To the LAP Workshop of 2001 in Montreal we wrote a paper ”Generic Layered Patterns for Business Modelling” (Lind & Goldkuhl, 2001a). In this paper we pursued a critical analysis of the layered architecture by Weigand et al. Based on this analysis we presented an alternative model (see figure 1).