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Workarounds in Business Processes: A Goal-Based Analysis

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Abstract

Workarounds in business processes and information systems (IS) have attracted research attention in recent years. Deviating from official processes, workarounds are goal-driven adaptations. Understanding the underlying problems or perceived barriers that motivate workarounds is essential for suggesting appropriate solutions which would lead to process and IS improvement. The premise taken in this paper is that workarounds are often motivated by misalignments between organizational goals, goals of local-units and actors, and the business process that should realize these goals. With this premise, we propose an i*-based analysis for identifying such misalignments that are associated to workarounds. We report an industrial case study that demonstrates the analysis and associates workarounds with the underlying misalignments. Improvement recommendations that were made following the analysis have been accepted by the organization and are currently being implemented.

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... Concerning workaround analysis in business processes, few papers have introduced methods for detecting workarounds from event log data. For example, Outmazgin and Soffer (2016) proposed a rule-based compliance checking method, Beerepoot et al. (2021) applied a multi-perspective conformance-checking method, and Weinzierl et al. (2022) presented a method relying on deep learning (DL). Even though these methods propose first approaches to detect specific patterns in historical event log data 1 that refer to specific workaround types, none of them affords to predict them in running business processes. ...
Conference Paper
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Workarounds are performed intentionally by employees to bypass obstacles constraining their day-to-day work. These obstacles manifest from latent misfits in the interplay of information systems, organizational structure, and human agency. While workarounds are often mandatory for employees to perform their work, they can yield positive and negative effects on an organization's performance. Process managers are supposed to identify workarounds early, promoting their positive while reducing their negative consequences. While related research has touched upon detecting workarounds in event logs that include data on completed processes, little is known on how to predict workarounds in a running business process. We set out to design a workaround prediction method using a deep learning approach. The IT artifact enables process managers to proactively intervene if workarounds are about to emerge in a business process, reducing their adverse effects while supporting organizational learning and process innovation.
Chapter
The improvement of business processes through learning and investigating workarounds has attracted research attention in recent years. Workarounds can be considered as a symptom of needed process improvements but adopting them does not necessarily lead to an appropriate one. Hence, identifying and understanding the underlying problems or perceived barriers that motivate workarounds is essential for suggesting an appropriate process improvement solution. In this paper, we propose a streamlined end-to-end approach that attempts to leverage workarounds to improve processes. This approach is based on two pillars: (1) a semi-automated workarounds detection by using the SWORD framework, which consists of twenty-two patterns to detect workarounds from events logs. (2) workarounds investigation and analysis using a motivational model that serves to reveal problems that lie under the identified workarounds. This analysis contributes toward proposing tailored and targeted process improvements. We report on an industrial case study that demonstrates the proposed approach, from workaround detection to proposing tailored process improvements. The improvements have been accepted by the organization and are currently being implemented.KeywordsBusiness process improvementsWorkaroundsAutomatic detectionMotivational analysisEvent logsCase study
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Business process management, design, and analysis is mostly centered around a process model, which depicts the behavior of a process case (instance). As a result, behavior that associates several cases together has received less attention. Yet, it is important to understand and track associations among cases, as they bear substantial consequences for compliance with regulations, root cause analysis of performance issues, exception handling, and prediction. This paper presents a framework of cross-case association patterns, categorized as intended association patterns and contextual association patterns. It further conceptualizes two example patterns—one for each category, and proposes techniques for detecting these patterns in an event log. The “split-case” workaround is an example of a pattern in the intended association category, and its proposed detection method exemplifies how patterns in this category can be approached. The patterns of a shared entity and a shared resource are contextual association patterns, which we propose to detect by means of hidden concept drifts. Evaluation of the two detection approaches is reported, using simulated logs for assessing their internal validity as well as real-life ones for exploring their external validity.
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Workarounds are a common practice in a broad range of organizational and technological contexts, which has received much attention in information systems research. They are sometimes considered negatively, associated with business risks and noncompliance, and sometimes positively, as a source of innovation and improvement. Although workaround-based process improvements typically adopt the workaround if its consequences are not harmful, this is not always the best option. The paper aims to pave the way for leveraging workarounds for process improvement by understanding problems that motivate them, so alternative solutions can be developed for these problems. Despite many proposed explanations, an in-depth understanding of the reasons underlying employee decisions that lead to workarounds is still needed. To this end, following a qualitative research approach, data were collected in six case study organizations, investigating workaround decisions made by employees through the lens of the theory of planned behavior. The principal unique theme running throughout the findings is that workaround motivation stems from perceived misalignment between organizational, local unit, or personal goals and their realization in business processes. Workarounds are enabled by various factors, including perceived workaround opportunities in the organization. These findings are abstracted to form an explanatory model as a contextual adaptation of the theory of planned behavior to explain workaround intentions. The proposed model explains workaround decisions in a way that can leverage this understanding to promote concrete process improvements.
Conference Paper
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Many healthcare processes are complex and variable, which makes it difficult to align them with rigid information systems. To cope with the resulting misalignment, caregivers invent alternatives, also known as workarounds. Workarounds with negative consequences, such as those that affect the safety of patients, need to be prevented. However, those with positive consequences may be adopted by the organisation. In this study, we set out to discover which workarounds are generally acceptable and which ones should be rejected. We have discovered ten different workarounds in a Dutch hospital and analysed these in terms of three characteristics associated with healthcare processes. We found that workarounds existing in knowledge-intensive processes and/or where a patient is involved are generally considered unacceptable. In contrast, workarounds in processes with a high degree of collaboration are likely to be accepted, provided that little knowledge is required and that no patient is involved. We contribute to the current literature on addressing workarounds in healthcare settings by providing insights into the factors influencing the organisational decision to accept or reject workarounds. In addition, we provide healthcare organisations with the tools to evaluate which workarounds are attractive to be established as proper work practices.
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Business process workarounds are specific forms of incompliant behavior, where employees intentionally decide to deviate from the required procedures although they are aware of them. Detecting and understanding the workarounds performed can guide organizations in redesigning and improving their processes and support systems. Existing process mining techniques for compliance checking and diagnosis of incompliant behavior rely on the available information in event logs and emphasize technological capabilities for analyzing this information. It is therefore not certain that all the forms of workaround behavior are addressed. In contrast, the paper builds on a list of generic types of workarounds found in practice, and explores whether and how they can be detected by process mining techniques. Results obtained for four workaround types in five real-life processes are reported. The remaining two types are not reflected in events logs and cannot be detected by process mining.
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The gap between the organizational needs and the extent to which an ‘off-the-shelf’ enterprise resource planning (ERP) system can meet these is called a misfit. A framework is developed to distinguish actual from perceived misfits. This is used to analyse the ERP implementation at four small-sized and medium-sized enterprises. The results show that they prefer to adjust the ERP system to their business processes when needed but often unnecessarily change the system to solve perceived misfits. The framework is a first step to prevent this unnecessary work in the future.
Article
Full-text available
Business process work-arounds are specific forms of incompliant behavior, where employees intentionally decide to deviate from the required procedures although they are aware of them. Detecting and understanding the work-arounds performed can guide organizations in redesigning and improving their processes and support systems. Existing process mining techniques for compliance checking and diagnosis of incompliant behavior rely on the available information in event logs and emphasize technological capabilities for analyzing this information. They do not distinguish intentional incompliance and do not address the sources of this behavior. In contrast, the paper builds on a list of generic types of work-arounds found in practice and explores whether and how they can be detected by process mining techniques. Results obtained for four work-around types in five real-life processes are reported. The remaining two types are not reflected in events logs and cannot be currently detected by process mining. The detected work-around data are further analyzed for identifying correlations between the frequency of specific work-around types and properties of the processes and of specific activities. The analysis results promote the understanding of work-around situations and sources.
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Although mentioned frequently in the organization, management, public administration, and technology literatures, workarounds are understudied and undertheorized. This article provides an integrated theory of workarounds that describes how and why workarounds are created. The theory covers most types of workarounds and most situations in which workarounds occur in operational systems. This theory is based on a broad but useful definition of workaround that clarifies the preconditions for the occurrence of a workaround. The literature review is organized around a diagram that combines the five "voices" in the literature of workarounds. That diagram is modeled after the diagram summarizing Orton and Weick's [1990] loose coupling theory, which identified and combined five similar voices in the literature about loose coupling. Building on that basis, the theory of workarounds is a process theory driven by the interaction of key factors that determine whether possible workarounds are considered and how they are executed. This theory is useful for classifying workarounds and analyzing how they occur, for understanding compliance and noncompliance to methods and management mandates, for incorporating consideration of possible workarounds into systems analysis and design, and for studying how workarounds and other adaptations sometimes lead to larger planned changes in systems.
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Interpretive research in information systems (IS) is now a well-established part of the field. However, there is a need for more material on how to carry out such work from inception to publication. I published a paper a decade ago (Walsham, 1995) which addressed the nature of interpretive IS case studies and methods for doing such research. The current paper extends this earlier contribution, with a widened scope of all interpretive research in IS, and through further material on carrying out fieldwork, using theory and analysing data. In addition, new topics are discussed on constructing and justifying a research contribution, and on ethical issues and tensions in the conduct of interpretive work. The primary target audience for the paper is less-experienced IS researchers, but I hope that the paper will also stimulate reflection for the more-experienced IS researcher and be of relevance to interpretive researchers in other social science fields.
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This paper provides a summary of studies of user resistance to Information Technology (IT) and identifies workaround activity as an understudied and distinct, but related, phenomenon. Previous categorizations of resistance have largely failed to address the relationships between the motivations for divergences from procedure and the associated workaround activity. This paper develops a composite model of resistance/workaround derived from two case study sites. We find four key antecedent conditions derived from both positive and negative resistance rationales and identify associations and links to various resultant workaround behaviours and provide supporting Chains of Evidence from two case studies.
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Book
Contenido: Introducción: 1) Cambio en procesos de empresas; -- Parte I Referentes al nivel de empresa: 2) Estrategia, cadenas de valor y ventaja competitiva; 3) Entendiendo a la empresa; 4) Arquitectura de negocios y alineamiento organizacional; 5) Administración de procesos; 6) Rendimiento del proceso de medición; 7) Grupo de nivel ejecutivo BPM. -- Parte II Referentes al nivel del proceso: 8) Comprensión y determinación del alcance de problemas de proceso; 9) Modelado de procesos; 10) Análisis de la tarea, conocimiento de los trabajadores y reglas de negocios; 11) Administración y medición de procesos en empresas; 12) Mejora de procesos con Six Sigma; 13) Metodología de rediseño del proceso de BPTrends; 14) El estudio de caso de sistemas ergonómicos. -- Parte III Implementación referente al nivel: 15) Herramientas de software para procesos de análisis y rediseño de empresas; 16) Series de software BPM; 17) Rediseño de ERP-Driven; 18) Conclusiones y Recomendaciones.
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