A Dataflow Perspective for Business Process Integration

Abstract

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.