Using DEMO and Activity Theory to Manage Organization Change

Activity Theory is a framework to understand the totality of human work and its praxis in an organization. Thus, when analysing human work, we must take into consideration not only the actions of individuals but also who is involved, what are their motives and goals, which rules apply in the context, what tools are used and the community in a minimum space where the work occurs. We call this minimum space an activity and can represented in a diagram called Activity Diagram. This theory also helps to understand the causes of every day organization problems, called contradictions in Activity Theory parlance. It appears that there is a lack of current methodologies that address the question of how to resolve the contradictions and how is assists in transforming an organization. This paper proposes a framework of how analysis contradictions within an organization, using Activity Diagram. The framework manages the change of an ontological model of an organization, developed in the DEMO methodology. This proposal is evaluated in a case study to improve the work in an organization specialised in information security.