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

The human resource perspective of a business process is concerned with the relation between the activities of a process and the actors who take part in them. Unlike other process perspectives, such as control flow, for which many different types of analyses have been proposed, such as finding deadlocks, there is an important gap regarding the human resource perspective. Resource analysis in business processes has not been defined, and only a few analysis operations can be glimpsed in previous approaches. In this paper, we identify and formally define seven design-time analysis operations related to how resources are involved in process activities. Furthermore, we demonstrate that for a wide variety of resource-aware BP models, those analysis operations can be automated by leveraging Description Logic (DL) off-the-shelf reasoners. To this end, we rely on Resource Assignment Language (RAL), a domain-specific language that enables the definition of conditions to select the candidates to participate in a process activity. We provide a complete formal semantics for RAL based on DLs and extend it to address the operations, for which the control flow of the process must also be taken into consideration. A proof-of-concept implementation has been developed and integrated in a system called CRISTAL. As a result, we can give an automatic answer to different questions related to the management of resources in business processes at design time.

Health-care delivery involves clinical handover processes that occur at many levels of inpatient care. These processes are essential to an effective health-care system due to their role in achieving efficient communication, reducing transmission time, and lowering costs. Ensuring safe and effective handover requires the coordination of multiple care providers that work together to deliver patient care efficiently. Poor coordination during handover can have major effects on patient care, leading to loss of information and contributing to adverse events. As health-care delivery evolves to become more patient-centered, handovers from short- to long-term care need to maintain a strong communication, which in turn will depend on the evolution of support systems for that communication. Due to the wide range of care providers and patient needs, there has so far been a lack of research work on handover processes. This study aims to explore the clinical handover process for patients moving from a cardiology unit to home and community care settings, and how they are affected by varying degrees of communication. It relies on literature review and a case study conducted at Montfort Hospital, Ontario, to identify and analyze the major factors involved in this type of handover, and to form suggestions about how this process could be improved. This thesis analyzes process scenarios arising in the case study, modeling them using business process management (BPM) tools and techniques to identify problems and formulate solutions. A model of the existing process is created and analyzed using business process management notation (BPMN), and is then subjected to analysis, the results of which identify several communication issues with a potential to cause delays and information loss. The findings highlight the importance of collaboration among care providers, and indicate the potential uses of BPM methodology to choreograph that collaboration. The study ultimately shows how improvements to collaboration and information exchange can increase the communication effectiveness in handover processes and reduce the probability of adverse patient events.

Reporting patient states is considered an important part of care process monitoring in the hospital to efficiently monitor how well the health care system is performing. Monitoring care processes with enough fine-grained detail to precisely track wait states and service states in order to reduce wait times and improve their quality of care are challenging. Business Process Management (BPM) technology is used to bring care processes online, but there is no clear methodology on how to integrate performance management into BPM tools in a systematic matter that is effective, and minimizes complications and development costs. This thesis proposes a BPM methodology for care process monitoring that structures how to integrate performance monitoring into BPM. The major contribution of this thesis includes a generic methodology for care processes monitoring that describes how to structure and instrument a business process model for systematic care process monitoring which includes support for handoff points between organizations where many wait-time bottlenecks occur. It also includes a prototype implementation based on an existing case study based on a real cardiology care process from an Ontario hospital. Our results are evaluated using three different prototypes based on this same care process. The research methodology for the thesis is based on Design-Science research.

Les projets de gestion des processus métiers apparaissent de plus en plus présents dans les préoccupations des décideurs. Ils semblent apporter de nombreux bénéfices, mais ils amènent les organisations à devoir dépasser d'importantes difficultés ; elles devront concilier de nombreuses contraintes, internes – en termes de performance ou de gestion de leurs ressources – ou externes – notamment en termes de contraintes de normalisation et/ou réglementaires –, source d'équivocité pour les acteurs. Notre problématique est alors la suivante : dans une situation fortement équivoque telle que la prise en compte d'une nouvelle norme, quelle méthodologie de management des processus permettrait de mieux concilier les contraintes internes et externes de l'organisation ? Nous proposons de nous appuyer sur un cas original d'adaptation d'une organisation industrielle aux contraintes de normalisation et sur l'étude de la littérature portant sur le management des processus, la création de sens et la théorie de la régulation sociale. Notre objectif est de mettre en évidence les caractéristiques d'un dispositif de management des processus qui puisse répondre à notre questionnement. Nous proposerons et défendrons alors la thèse suivante : les démarches de management des processus trouvent un réel écho auprès des managers car elles sont susceptibles de les aider à créer du sens, grâce aux cadres que leur mise en place suppose et aux interactions qu'elles permettent. / Managers appear to be more and more concerned by business process management projects. Although these systems seem to bring many benefits, organizations are required to overcome major difficulties; by conciliating numerous constraints, both internal –in terms of performance or resource management– and external –particularly in terms of standards, and/or regulation–, a source of equivocality for actors. The issue could be described as following: in a highly equivocal situation such as a new standard integration, which business process management methodology could conciliate better internal and external constraints of the organization? We propose to build on an original case of adaptation of an industrial organization facing standardi-zation constraints and on the study of the literature of business process management, sense-making and social regulation theory. Our aim is to highlight the characteristics of a business process management system that could enable us to answer our questioning. We will there-fore propose and defend the following thesis: business process management appeals to managers because it is likely to help them in sensemaking through its required framework and interactions introduced.

This thesis is focused on company process management. The aim is to describe the operation and management of a particular company, through defining yet undescribed processes, so as to enable operational improvements and organizational development by its application. The intention is, however, also to find the customary processes and to achieve such a general approach that it can be possible to use the created models for other subjects. The object of thesis is not to model vast and complex diagrams, but to clarify unclear places in company. For example, the distribution of activity in multiple portions, between multiple processes, so that the output is a clear representation of the organisation process map. Company management is a topic that is currently very popular and addressed by many authors in various texts. Every day there are new approaches and methods created in order to face this topic, and to achieve high efficiency. Due to the quantum of works is not easy to choose the ideal approach. It is also important to realize that not every organization can be satisfied with each methodology. This thesis is divided into chapters. The introduction provides the objectives of the work and there are mentioned hypotheses which are discussed in Chapter Five. One hypothesis is focused on the exercise of the MMABP methodology, and asks questions that lead to discussion whether the use of the methodology leads to the creation of ideal and generally adaptable processes. The second chapter describes the methodological approach and familiarize the reader with the modelled project. The third chapter is dedicated to the global process map. The fourth chapter focuses on individual processes. It is followed by discussion and conclusions in the fifth and sixth chapter, commenting outputs of this work.

The aim of the thesis is the specification of user requirements for complaints and claims management in selected company providing financial services in the Czech Republic. The first section explains the basic theoretical background in the field of process management and information systems. It is also discussed the view of complaints and claims management from customer side. The second section describes the system of complaints and claims management in the company. Based on the analysis of the process the next section specifies the user requirements for a new information system and assesses expected benefits and potential risks of implementing a new information system.

This diploma thesis deals with the topic of Business Process Management, its development and fundamental paradigms in the field of BPM as BPR. The thesis also compares approaches to BPM. Furthermore, it defines the term "process" and describes its classification. The thesis also explains the concept of the process-driven organization, including its characteristics. An integral part of the thesis is the explanation of the holistic approach to BPM and its technical aspect, i.e. the business process modeling which deals with creating the diagrams classified by basic principles of object orientation. The thesis introduces general modeling language UML and its specification in the form of notation BPMN and Eriksson-Penker. Also there are shown few examples of diagrams used in the BPM. All of these findings are then used in the constructing of process models and diagrams in the defined research area of the particular organization.

This thesis deals with business process management phenomena and its concept of business process reengineering in particular. Furthemore, the principles, chosen methods and critical success factors of business process reengineering implementation are discussed. This thesis also concerns itself with holistic conception of business process management which incorporates both hard factors (e.g. process modeling) and soft factors dealing with rather social aspects of any organizational change. All theoretical findings are applied in specific organization where the business processes are rethought.

The theme of this thesis is the strategic management in the context of the knowledge economy. The output of the innovation strategy is applied to the plastic and aesthetic surgery clinic. The theoretical part deals with the introduction of strategic management theory, vast business analysis and principles of Balanced Scorecard. Within the theory are discussed different approaches to the innovation process. The practical part is based on theoretical knowledge and applies them to creating an innovation strategy based on business process management.