Abstract
This paper takes a cross-disciplinary view of the ontology of “business process”: how the concept is treated in the IS research literature and how related concepts (with stronger human behavioural orientation) from organisational and management sciences can potentially inform this IS perspective. In particular, is there room for socio-technical concepts such as technology affordance, derived from the constructivist tradition, in improving our understanding of operational business processes?
The paper draws on the current research being pursued by the authors in developing a theoretical framework for understanding the role of IT in organisational agility. In this developing theoretical model, we are seeking to include the user-oriented socio-technical dimension that distinguishes the IT “as-used” from the IT “as-designed” in our use of business process as an organisational building block.
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Crick, C., Chew, E. (2014). Towards a Consistent Cross-Disciplinary Ontology for Business Process. In: Bider, I., et al. Enterprise, Business-Process and Information Systems Modeling. BPMDS EMMSAD 2014 2014. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 175. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-43745-2_16
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