Organizational Units, Services
Work is carried out by organizational units. An organizational unit consists of agents (people, organizations, AI) along with the materials and equipment at their disposal. The smallest organizational unit is a single employee hired for a specific position and managing the corresponding resources.
Most often, organizational units do not initiate work on their own. In collective activities, some organizational units have the authority to assign tasks to others, who in turn have the obligation to fulfill such requests. The entire set of organizational units with mutual authorities constitutes an organization. The system of interest may be created by an extended enterprise, which can include several organizations. In other words, legal or organizational-legal separation is just one possible way to describe the system-creator.
Each organizational unit performs external actions, which we refer to as a service. For example, within an enterprise, there may be an organizational unit that calculates salaries, and another that distributes them. These are the services of salary calculation and salary distribution. There are also assembly services, such as assembling a passenger vehicle. Organizational units can provide services to other organizational units or directly to the system of interest[1].
Work arises when an organizational unit receives an assignment and the necessary resources. After that, the organizational unit delivers the required service, resulting in a work artifact. If there is no assignment or resources, the service is not provided and the work is not performed.
For example, the service of assembling a passenger vehicle. ↩︎