Towards emergence phenomenon in business process management

Abstract

A standard solution regarding business process management automation in enterprises is the use of workflow management systems working by the Rule-Based Reasoning approach. In such systems, the process model which is designed entirely before the implementation has to meet all needs deriving from business activity of the organization. In practice, it means that great limitations arise in process control abilities, especially in the dynamic business environment. Therefore, new kinds of workflow systems may help which typically work in more agile way e.g. following the Case-Based Reasoning approach. The paper shows another possible solution – the use of emergence theory which indicates among other conditions required to fulfill stimulation of the system (for example the business environment) to run grass-roots processes that lead to arising of new more sophisticated organizing forms. The paper also points the using opportunity of such techniques as the processing of complex events to fulfill key conditions pointed by the emergence theory.

Keywords

• business process management
• adaptive case management
• emergence