<span>Part II: </span> How Can We Represent Processes? Toward A Theory Of Process Representation - Organizing Business Knowledge [Electronic resources] : The MIT Process Handbook نسخه متنی

Part II: How Can We Represent Processes? Toward A Theory Of Process Representation

Chapter List

Part IIA: Coordination as The Management Of Dependencies

Chapter 2: The Interdisciplinary Study of Coordination

Chapter 3: A Taxonomy of Organizational Dependencies and Coordination Mechanisms

Chapter 4: Toward a Design Handbook for Integrating Software Components

Part IIB: Specialization of Processes – Organizing Collections of Related Processes

Chapter 5: Defining Specialization for Process Models

Part IIC: Different Views of Processes

Chapter 6: Process as Theory in Information Systems Research

Chapter 7: Grammatical Models of Organizational Processes

Part Overview

In this section we include papers on the three main theoretical foundations for the Process Handbook: coordination theory, specialization, and processes.

Coordination

Chapter 2, by Malone and Crowston, is the basic reference for coordination theory. The chapter presents examples of similar coordination problems encountered in a variety of disciplines and shows how they can all be analyzed as arising from dependencies among activities. For example, approaches to sharing resources have been analyzed in economics, organization theory and computer science, among others. In addition to sharing resources, the coordination problems analyzed in this chapter include producer–consumer dependencies, simultaneity constraints and task –subtask relations.

Central to the application of coordination theory is a typology of different types of dependencies and their associated coordination mechanisms. The list of coordination problems in the first chapter of this section was an early version of our thinking about what such a typology might include. Chapter 3 by Crowston, presents a much more extensive theoretical derivation of a typology of dependencies based on an analysis of the possible configurations of activities that use and create resources.

The current version of the Handbook uses a simplified version of this typology (summarized in chapter 1) that focuses attention on the common case of two activities and one resource. This typology includes the three elementary dependency types shown in the first row of figure 1.2. The first possibility, which we call flow, occurs when one activity creates a resource that is used by another. The second possibility, which we call sharing, occurs when one resource is used by two activities. And the third possibility, which we call fit, occurs when a single resource is jointly created by two activities. The flow dependency is further analyzed into three subdependencies, namely the dependencies that make sure the right thing (resource) is available at the right time,inthe right place.

Chapter 4 on coordination theory, by Dellarocas, shows how the perspective of coordination can be applied to designing computer software. In particular, it shows that the management of dependencies among software components can be viewed as a distinct design problem itself, orthogonal to the problem of implementing the core functional pieces of an application. This chapter gives an overview of how the different dependency types we have already identified arise in computer programs. For instance, many different kinds of programming techniques (e.g., pipes, procedure calls, and semaphores) can be viewed as alternative ways of managing different kinds of flow dependencies. A much more detailed view of this typology of software dependencies is included below in chapter 10.

Specialization

The second, and in many ways even more important, conceptual tool in the Process Handbook is specialization of processes. This concept allows us to represent both the commonalities and differences in large ''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''families''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''of related processes in a very precise way. It also lets us take advantage of these relationships to let our software tools simplify the task of maintaining these large databases. For instance, when you make a change in one activity, the system can automatically make the same change in all the other related activities where it should apply.

Most readers with a background in computer science will already be familiar with the concepts of specialization and inheritance as used, for instance, in object-oriented programming systems. Our use of specialization and inheritance is very similar to this traditional use, but with one very important difference. Traditional object-oriented programming systems apply these concepts to objects (''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''nouns''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''); we apply them to activities (''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''verbs''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''). Furthermore processes are composed of activities, so specialization of a process may change the decomposition as well as properties of the processes. Chapter 5, by Wyner and Lee, analyzes what this means in more precise terms.

Process

Chapters 6 and 7 examine processes from a research perspective. Chapter 6, by Crowston, was originally presented at a conference on information systems research, but its key message—that process descriptions themselves can constitute an important kind of theory about organizations—applies to organization theory in general. The chapter analyzes alternative perspectives on processes, building up to a view of processes as assemblies of activities. This analysis includes the coordination theory view that dependencies between activities impose constraints on the ways the activities can be assembled. The theoretical perspectives in this chapter are illustrated with brief case examples of different variations in restaurant service processes.

Chapter 7, by Pentland, presents an alternative theoretical perspective for analyzing organizational processes—the perspective of formal grammars from linguistics. A grammar provides a way to represent a potentially infinite set of patterns (in this case, the set of possible processes) in a concise way. Using a lexicon of elementary actions and rules for how the actions can be combined, grammatical models provide a natural way of describing the kinds of layering and nesting of actions that typify organizational processes.