For some years now, researchers have been trying to understand and model the workings of offices. Many modeling approaches focus on the structural or logical elements of office work (such as information and task flows), placing relatively little emphasis on the human element. The authors of this paper remind us that offices are, first and foremost, places of human activity and that social interaction, interpersonal communication, social goals, commitments, and other human behaviors should be represented in the modeling arena. The authors believe that using communication activity as one of the core constructs in a modeling environment can increase the salience of the human element in office work.

The SAMPO approach instantiates this philosophy. The paper introduces the foundations--speech act theory and discourse analysis--on which SAMPO is based and presents the authors’ rationale for adopting a speech-act framework. The paper also contains a review of related office modeling research and an example of SAMPO analysis. Readers seeking basic coverage of these topics should find the paper very useful. Readers seeking a critical discussion of the merits of the speech-act approach will be disappointed, however. While the authors clearly explain their rationale for adopting the speech-act framework, they do not attempt to evaluate it on either theoretical or empirical grounds. This omission is somewhat surprising in light of the sometimes controversial history of speech-act–based office tools. On balance, however, this paper is a readable and useful introduction to office modeling in general and SAMPO in particular. I recommend it.