Digitalization transforms business processes substantially due to increasing customer demands for flexibility, new technologies (e.g., Intelligent Technologies) and emerging markets. Business process models are used to understand current processes and provide guidance for process improvements. A role-based extension of the de-facto standard business process modeling language BPMN is proposed that can support the business transformation and other modeling challenges. Bachmann and Daya (1977) introduced roles, which provide the basis for the extension. Steimann (2000) and Kühn (2017) increased the understanding of roles and provided an overview of roles' versatility. This work incorporates roles in business process modeling, thereby closing the gap between structural and behavioral modeling.:Contents List of figures II List of tables III 1 Introduction 1 2 Background 1 3 Business Process Modeling Challenges 3 3.1 Variety of Performers 3 3.2 Adaptability 4 3.3 Context-Awareness 4 4 Proposing Roles as a Solution 5 5 The Role-based Business Process Model and Notation 7 5.1 BPMN Extension Mechanism 8 5.2 Composition of Roles in a Business Process 9 5.2.1 Active Roles 9 5.2.2 Passive Roles 9 5.3 Connector Elements 10 5.3.1 Role Prohibition 10 5.3.2 Role Inheritance 10 5.3.3 Role Condition 10 5.4 Location Role 10 5.5 Role Start Event 10 5.6 Gateways 11 5.7 RBPMN Syntax 11 5.8 Process Role Hierarchy 12 6 Role-Feature Integration 12 7 Modeling Case Study 14 8 Discussion 16 9 Conclusion 17 10 Acknowledgments 18 References IV