Toward a Parsimonious Architecture for Intelligent Organizational Information Systems

An architecture for intelligent organizational information systems is proposed which consists of three functions: processing, communicating, and memory--any or all of which may be performed by either humans or computers. Processing occurs on a set of communicating processors with access to memory, and is defined as having three sub-functions: sensing, interpreting, and acting. The communicating and memory functions are seen to have certain basic characteristics whether described in terms from human organization or computer organization literature. The architecture may prove a useful guide for future research which begins to consider intelligent organizational information systems with increasingly synergistic roles played by humans and computers.