The Transaction Axiom

Abstract

In the previous chapter we saw that an enterprise is a system of actors who perform two kinds of acts: production acts and coordination acts. The question that will be addressed in this chapter is how these acts are related to each other. Are there particular structures or patterns in which they occur, or is any pattern possible? At first glance, when reviewing the enormous diversity of coordination-oriented processes in practice, the answer seems to be that there are at least many ‘really’ different processes. Fortunately, it appears that they can be considered as paths through some generic coordination pattern. Therefore, the second axiom of the Ψ-theory states that coordination acts are performed as steps in universal patterns. These patterns, also called transactions, always involve two actor roles and are aimed at achieving a particular result. We will refer to the second axiom as the transaction axiom.