Enterprises are dynamic systems that struggle to adapt to the constant changes in their environment. The complexity of these systems frequently originates inefficiencies that turn into the loss of resources and might even compromise organizations’ viability. Control and G.O.D. (sub)organizations allow enterprises to specify measures and viability norms that help to identify, acknowledge, and handle exceptions. Organizational engineering processes are deployed to treat dysfunctions within the G.O.D. organization but often fail to eliminate or circumvent the root cause of it. In this paper, we propose an extension in the model to allow a thorough investigation of the root causes of dysfunctions within the organizational engineering processes. Grounded on the seven guidelines for Information System Research in the design-science paradigm, we claim that the organizational engineering process should be supplemented with a systematic and broader investigation of causes, namely the Ishikawa approach of cause-and-effect analysis. The main contributions of this paper are the improvement of the organizational engineering process for handling unexpected exceptions in reactive change dynamics and the freely available Dysfunctions Bank with common dysfunctions and its probable causes. This work should trigger a reduction in the number of organizational dysfunctions and help to keep updated the organizational self and the organization’s ontological model.

This paper has as its background, a practical enterprise change project where the Design and Engineering Methodology for Organizations (DEMO) was used in the initial stage as to give a neutral and concise but comprehensive view of the organization of a local government administration in the process of implementing an e-government project. The main contribution presented in this paper is an interview based qualitative validation of some of DEMO's axioms and claimed benefits – something that, to our knowledge has never been done up to now. Namely, we were able to validate DEMO's qualities of conciseness and comprehensiveness brought about by the transaction and distinction axioms and also the stability of its ontological models which are, by nature, highly abstracted from the human and technological means that implement and operate an organization.