The ontological deficiencies of process modeling in practice

Jan Recker, Marta Indulska, Michael Rosemann and Peter Green

European Journal of Information Systems, 2010, vol. 19, issue 5, 501-525

Abstract: Business process modeling is widely regarded as one of the most popular forms of conceptual modeling. However, little is known about the capabilities and deficiencies of process modeling grammars and how existing deficiencies impact actual process modeling practice. This paper is a first contribution towards a theory-driven, exploratory empirical investigation of the ontological deficiencies of process modeling with the industry standard Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN). We perform an analysis of BPMN using a theory of ontological expressiveness. Through a series of semi-structured interviews with BPMN adopters we explore empirically the actual use of this grammar. Nine ontological deficiencies related to the practice of modeling with BPMN are identified, for example, the capture of business rules and the specification of process decompositions. We also uncover five contextual factors that impact on the use of process modeling grammars, such as tool support and modeling conventions. We discuss implications for research and practice, highlighting the need for consideration of representational issues and contextual factors in decisions relating to BPMN adoption in organizations.

Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1057/ejis.2010.38 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:tjisxx:v:19:y:2010:i:5:p:501-525

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/tjis20

DOI: 10.1057/ejis.2010.38

Access Statistics for this article

European Journal of Information Systems is currently edited by Par Agerfalk

More articles in European Journal of Information Systems from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().