Enterprise engineering is an emerging discipline that studies enterprises from an engineering perspective. This means that enterprises are considered to be purposefully designed and implemented systems, which consequently can be - designed and re-implemented if there is a need for change. Behavioral and m- agerial knowledge is perfectly adequate to identify the need for a change, but it is insu?cient to bring it about. Next, enterprise engineering is rooted in both the organizational sciences and the information system sciences. The rigorous integrationof these traditionallydisjoint scienti?c areashas become possible f- lowing the recognition that communication is a form of action. Since then it has been quite common to speak of communicative acts, like requesting and prom- ing. Consequently, communication (and information) is given an organizational interpretation: requests and promises are commitments, and communication is entering into and complying with commitments. This important insight clari?es the fact that enterprises belong to the category of social systems, i. e. , their - tive elements (actors) are social individuals (human beings). Founding itself on this newscienti?c paradigm,enterpriseengineeringaddressesthe challengesthat enterprisesarecurrentlyfacedwith,boththeinternalandtheexternalones.
The unifying role of human beings makes it possible to address problems in a holistic way, to achieve unity and integration in bringing about organizational change. This has not been shown before. Thedevelopmentofsuchaninnovativeapproach,asenterpriseengineeringis, requiresthe activeinvolvementof a varietyof researchinstitutes and a tight c- laboration between them. This is achieved by a continuously expanding network ofuniversitiesandcompanies,calledtheCIAO!Network(www. ciaonetwork. org).