Authors:
Cornelia Gaebert
1
and
Jörg Friedrich
2
Affiliations:
1
c/o University of Muenster, Germany
;
2
FernUniversität in Hagen, Germany
Keyword(s):
Group Agents, Collective Actions, Rationality, Software Development Project, Software Development Outsourcing, Software Project Management, Rational Actors.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Project Planning, Monitoring and Control
;
Requirements Elicitation and Specification
;
Software Engineering
;
Software Engineering Methods and Techniques
;
Software Project Management
Abstract:
In the field of software development outsourcing and software project management, researchers use concepts
from economic theory to describe organizations, groups, teams, and involved people as rational actors.
However, they fail to justify these approaches based on an appropriate understanding of the involved social
actors’ status. The question, who really can be described as a rational actor, the organizations, teams, or the
individual people, and which kind of rationality they provide, remains open. We have therefore analyzed the
social structure of software development projects (SDP) as described in research literature. Based on novel
concepts from the field of social philosophy, we have developed a social ontology (SO) of the actors in the
context of commercial SDPs. We identified different actors at several levels, with different kinds of
rationality. Organizations, departments, and groups may act as rational actors if following well-defined
regulations and methods. Actor classi
fication according to the rationality of the actors’ decision-making will
help understand and predict their behavior and thus provide a solid base for the application of economic
concepts to software development outsourcing and software project management research.
(More)