Workshop Theme

The involvement of human aspects into Business Process Management takes place both on a social and individual level. Social information systems   such as social media, Enterprise 2.0, and social platforms are spreading quickly in society, organizations, and economics. Enterprises use social information systems to improve their business processes and create new business models. The integration of business process management and social information systems becomes more and more widespread. New approaches for using social information systems in combination with business process management appear frequently.

Social information systems are used both in external and internal business processes. Companies can co-create products and services, e.g., companies integrate customers into product development to capture ideas and features. Thus, communication with the customer is increasingly bi-directional. The integration of business process management and social information systems enables the creation of new business models using social platforms. Social platforms enable the creation of cross-side network effects and therefore called two- or multi-sided markets . Prominent examples are TripAdvisor, UBER, and AirBnB. By using the value-creating mechanisms of social information systems, business models became possible, which were not realizable before. E.g., the AirBnB uses a crowdsourcing model for quality control by using users’ reviews of apartments. In this way, a quality assessment of products and services became possible that was too costly so far. 

Social information systems also create new possibilities to enhance internal business processes by improving the exchange of knowledge and information, to speed up decisions, etc. Social information systems enable value-creating interactions such as weak ties, social production, egalitarianism. These value-creating interactions open new possibilities and potentials for the design of processes. Weak ties enable the flexible integration of process participants, social production paves the way for the bottom-up definition of business processes, and egalitarian decisions change how decisions are made in business processes. The use of value-creating interactions is tightly intertwined with new forms of involvement of human beings into business process management. 

Human aspects complement the social perspective on business process management. The fact that more and more enterprises are using business process management implies that the human individual is involved in a multitude of business processes. Individuals must cope with multiple process contexts and thus must administer data appropriately. It is necessary to reflect on Human-Human interactions and responsibility, in a virtual/digital environment where everything becomes information. Digital assistants such as Alexa integrate individuals in processes that could not interact with conventional computers. In this way, new forms of interaction between processes and humans arise. Furthermore, individuals must integrate the external business processes into their work environment or even to couple several external business processes. Human aspects of business process management relate to the individual who creates a process model, to the communication among people, during and after the process execution, and to the social process of collaborative modeling. They also relate to the interaction / collaboration / coordination / cooperation that should be implemented in the business process or to specific human-related aspects of the business process itself and their representations in models. 

Before this background, the goal of the workshop is to explore how social information systems integrate with business process management, and how business process management may profit from this integration. Furthermore, the workshop investigates the human aspects introduced into Business Process Management by involving human actors. Examples are the use of crowdsourced knowledge and tasks, the need for new user interfaces, e.g., augmented reality and voice bots. 

The workshop will discuss three topics. Social Business Process Management, Social Business and Platforms, and Human Aspects of Business Process Management. Social Business Process Management is the use of Social information systems to support one or multiple phases of the business process life cycle. 

1. Social Business Process Management (SBPM)

- Social information systems in the BPM lifecycle e.g., Design, Deployment, Operation, and Evaluation

- BPM methods and paradigms to cope with Social information systems

- Influence of weak ties, social production, egalitarianism, and mutual service provisioning on BPM

- Trust and reputation in business processes management carried through Social information systems

- Influence of weak ties, social production, egalitarianism and mutual service provisioning in the design and management of business processes?

- Integration of Social information systems with WFMS or other business process support systems?

- Conceptual modelling for knowledge intensive and social business processes? 

2. Social Business and Social Platforms: Social information systems supporting business processes

- New opportunities offered by Social information systems for the support of business processes 

- Social platforms and their support for business processes and new business models

- Value (co-)creation in social business and social platforms

- Sociality requirements of business processes according to their nature (predictable/non predictable; production/collaborative/ad hoc)

- Use of Wikis, Blogs etc. to support business processes

- Reflections on Human-Human interactions and responsibility, in a virtual/digital environment where everything becomes information : Social networks, social engineering, discernment, reflection vs. reflex, ethics, responsibility, citizenship. 

- Fitting between types of Social information systems and phases of the BPM lifecycle 

- New trends in business knowledge modelling leveraged by social production

3. Human Aspects of Business Process Management

- Concepts, technologies, and services to support individuals acting in business processes, e.g. process mining 

- Algorithmic management 

- Crowdsourcing

- Assistants such as Google, Alexa, Siri etc. in business process management and business processes

- New interfaces to business processes: chatbots, virtual reality, augmented reality etc. 

- Reflections on Human-Human interactions and responsibility, in a virtual/digital environment where everything becomes information: Social networks, social engineering, discernment, reflection vs. reflex, ethics, responsibility, citizenship. 

- Human-centric business processes

- Human resource management in business processes (workloads, skills, preferences, affinities, context, mobility, etc …)