Toward a Structured Approach to Activity Theory Analysis: Capturing and Representing Parties’ Understandings in Business Process Modeling

Sachs (among others) has convincingly argued that many process change failures have resulted from too narrow a focus and that a more holistic view of work is required. Thus, we believe it essential that effective process modeling approaches and tools provide adequate support for the so-called “softer” aspects. In this context, activity theory would appear to have much to offer and a process modeling approach, centered on this theory, is the major focus of this paper. Activity theory incorporates notions of intentionality, history, mediation, motivation, understanding, culture and community and, in particular, it provides a framework in which the critical issue of context can be taken into account. Unfortunately, however, the activity theory literature reveals very little in the way of prescriptive guidelines or tools that might be employed by practitioners. As a first step toward addressing this limitation, we employ activity theory as a framework for the development of a process modeling methodology (plus an associated automated repository and analysis tools). A prototype repository has now been implemented, and we report on its evaluation as part of a collaborative business process modeling exercise we are undertaking with a large Australian organization. We focus particularly on the representation and analysis of “understandings” - a term we use to encompass motives, beliefs, norms, values and the like. Aus. Aca. Busi & Eco. Rev Vol 3(1), January 2017, P 27-38