Corporate governance has been heavily criticised because of failures of companies across the globe. In response to these failures, legislative and regulatory changes have been introduced. However, sceptics argue that compliance to these legislative and regulatory acts is costly and time consuming, contributing to overregulation. Furthermore, these measures lack business value and there is no guarantee that adherence to these measures can be enforced. This thesis presents an argument for the better utilisation of electronic means and specifically Business Process Management Systems (BPMSs) in support of corporate governance. Orlikowski’s theory of “Technologies-in-Practice” is applied as theoretical underpinning to guide the research process. This thesis follows an interpretive research paradigm approach to gain insight and understanding of how the King principles for governance, can be inscribed into BPMSs and their components to improve corporate governance in South Africa. The theory of Orlikowski supports the structuration perspective of the research phenomenon. During this study, data was collected from a BPMS vendor company and seven South African BPMS user companies. After following a process of triangulation, the research findings were used to propose a theoretical framework that explains the utilisation of BPMSs in support of corporate governance in South Africa. Finally, a theoretical framework, reviewed by experts from the domains of corporate governance and business process management, is presented. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2014. / gm2014 / Informatics / unrestricted

Orientador: Mauricio Ferreira Magalhães / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Engenharia Eletrica e de Computação / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-08T01:16:08Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Nader_MarcosVaninePortilhode_M.pdf: 1214383 bytes, checksum: 40e83a8be1c7e86e788d810a8799f6b8 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006 / Resumo: Duas áreas importantes estão em desenvolvimento: Gerência de Processos de Negócios (Business Process Management) e Orquestração de Web Services (Web Services Orchestration). Ambas têm um objetivo que é integrar aplicações ou outros processos que tenham interfaces web services, usando o paradigma de processos de negócios. Uma linguagem que vem sendo difundida para essas aplicações é a BPEL (Business Process Execution Language). Este trabalho apresenta um framework aplicável à análise e verificação de processos de negócios escritos em BPEL através do uso de Pi-Calculus. Pi-Calculus é uma álgebra de processos que possui mecanismos formais para criação e ativação de processos que se comunicam através da troca de mensagens em canais, usando o modelo de rendezvous síncrono. Nesse framework, o processo BPEL é traduzido para um programa Pi-Calculus. Uma Máquina Virtual Pi-Calculus (MVP) recebe o programa Pi-Calculus e produz todas as reações possíveis, ou seja, gera todos os caminhos de execução que o programa pode seguir. A partir desse resultado, efetua-se a verificação de propriedades como: atendimento às especificações de mais alto nível, ordenação de eventos e ocorrência ou não de deadlocks. Em termos práticos, uma ferramenta desse tipo pode ser incorporada aos Sistemas de Gerência de Processos de Negócios (Business Process Management Systems - BPMS) para ampliar a cobertura de testes durante as fases de análise e implementação de um processo dentro do seu ciclo de vida. Nesses tipos de sistemas, a reparação de um erro durante a fase de execução é muito mais custosa que nos sistemas tradicionais / Abstract: Two important areas have been in development lately: Business Process Management and Web Service Orchestration. In both of them, the objective is to integrate applications with web services interface through business process paradigm. A number of languages have been proposed with consensus being formed around BPEL (Business Process Execution Language). This dissertation presents a framework for BPEL processes analysis and verification through Pi-Calculus. Pi-Calculus is a process algebra with formal mechanisms for processes creation and activation; these processes communicate sending and receiving messages through channels using the synchronous rendezvous model. In this framework, the BPEL process is translated to a Pi-Calculus program, A Pi-Calculus Virtual Machine (MVP) receives a Pi-calculus program and executes all possible reactions, that is, it generates all execution paths possible to be taken. With this result, the properties such as high-level specification accomplishment, events ordering and deadlock freedom are verified. In practical terms, a tool of this sort can be part of a Business Process Management System (BPMS) to broaden test coverage during the analysis and implementation phases within a process life cycle. In these kinds of systems, a repairing mistake during the execution phase is more complex than in traditional systems / Mestrado / Engenharia de Computação / Mestre em Engenharia Elétrica