Workflow Management Systems for Process Organisations

1. Front Matter

   Pages I-XII

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Thomas Schäl

   Pages 1-5

3. From Functional to Process Organisation

   • Thomas Schäl

   Pages 7-49

4. Analysis and design of co-operative networks

   • Thomas Schäl

   Pages 51-82

5. Workflow management technology

   • Thomas Schäl

   Pages 83-111

6. Field study I: The Coordinator supporting distributed management processes

   • Thomas Schäl

   Pages 113-127

7. Field Study II: X_Workflow for overdraft management in a bank

   • Thomas Schäl

   Pages 129-159

8. Conclusion

   • Thomas Schäl

   Pages 161-162

9. Back Matter

   Pages 163-204

   PDF

As the business environment has become more and more turbulent over the past decade, information technology has begun to run into the danger of becoming an impediment rather than a motor of progress. In order to deal with the need for rapid, continuous change, computer science is challenged to develop novel interrelated information and communication technologies, and to align them with the social needs of co-operating user groups, as well as the management requirements of formal organisations. Workflow systems are among the most advertised technologies addressing this trend, but they mean different things to different people. Computer scientists understand workflows as a way to extract control from application programs, thus making them more flexible. Bureaucratic organisations (and most commercial products) perceive them as supporting a linear or branching flow of documents from one workplace to another - the next try after the failure cf office automation. This book takes another perspective, that of the modem customer-driven and groupwork-oriented process organisation. Extending the language-action perspective from the CSCW field, its customer-oriented view of workflows enables novel kinds of business process analysis, and leads to interesting new combinations of information and co-operation technologies. Schal's empirical studies show some of the pitfalls resulting from a naive use of these technologies, and exemplify ways to get around these pitfalls.

• Buseness Processes Re-engineering
• Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSSW)
• Computergestützte Zusammenarbeit
• Cooperative Information Systems
• Geschäftsprozess-Engineering
• Groupware
• Kooperative Informationssysteme
• Workflow Management
• Automation
• business process
• computer science
• computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW)
• Geschäftsprozess
• information system
• Information Technology (IT)
• language
• office automation
• organization
• workflow
• workflow management
• workflow systems
• Zusammenarbeit

• Schalksmühle, Germany

  Thomas Schäl

• Cutro, Italy

  Thomas Schäl