A Dataflow Perspective for Business Process Integration

• Published in: ACM transactions on management information systems 2015-03, Vol.5 (4), p.1-33
• Main Authors: Guo, Xitong, Sun, Sherry X., Vogel, Doug
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 2158-656X; 2158-6578
• DOI: 10.1145/2629450

Business process integration has become prevalent as business increasingly crosses organizational boundaries. To address the issue of protecting organizations’ competitive knowledge and private information while also enabling business-to-business (B2B) collaboration, past research has focused mainly on customized public and private process design, as well as structural correctness of the integrated workflow. However, a dataflow perspective is important for business process integration. This article presents a data-flow perspective using workflow management and mathematical techniques to address data exchange problems in independent multistakeholder business process integration in dynamic circumstances. The research is conducted following a design science paradigm. We build artifacts that include interorganizational workflow concepts, a workflow model, and a public dataset calculation method. The use of the proposed artifacts is illustrated by applying them to a real-world case in the Shenzhen (Chaiwan) port. The utility of the artifacts is evaluated through interviews with practitioners in industry. We conclude that this research complements the control-flow perspective in the interorganizational workflow management area and also contributes to B2B information-sharing literature; further, the dataflow formalism can help practitioners to formally provide the right data at the right time in dynamic circumstances.