A Workaround Design System for Anticipating, Designing, and/or Preventing Workarounds

Idealized system design produces requirements reflecting management intentions and “best practices.” This paper proposes a workaround design system (WDS) for anticipating, designing, and/or preventing workarounds that bypass systems as designed. A WDS includes a process and an interactive “workaround design tool” (WDT) for identifying and evaluating foreseeable workarounds based on work system theory and a theory of workarounds. This paper summarizes the conceptual background and explains the form, use, and implications of the proposed WDS and WDT. The idea of WDS addresses significant gaps in practice and research. Designers should have methods for identifying likely obstacles and anticipating and evaluating a non-trivial percentage of plausible workarounds. Methods for identifying workarounds might help in training work system participants. Researchers might use WDS to explore why specific responses to obstacles did or did not occur. The lack of methods related to anticipating, designing or preventing workarounds implies that WDS may prove fruitful even though it is impossible to anticipate all possible workarounds

Toward an Ontology of Workarounds: A Literature Review on Existing Concepts

While workarounds are studied frequently in information systems research, a coherent and interrelated structure to organize the knowledge of the field is still missing. In this study, we provide a first step towards an ontology of workarounds in order to enable researchers to study the relationships among the core concepts. By identifying existing literature, we discover three gaps in workaround research: (1) lack of conceptual consensus, (2) fragmentation and (3) static perspective. To advance theory, we provide an overview of different types of workarounds that are frequently used in literature. Based on these findings we derive core concepts of workarounds that are used in literature and provide an ontology of workarounds

Workaround Aware Business Process Modeling

Workarounds are an omnipresent part of organizational settings where formal rules and regulations describe standardized processes. Still, only few studies have focused on incorporating workarounds in designing information systems (IS) or as a part of management decisions. Therefore, this study provides an extension to the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) by conducting a metamodel transformation, which includes workarounds. As a result, the Workaround Process Modeling Notation (WPMN) (1) leads organizations in designing workaround aware systems, (2) supports managers in deciding how to deal with workarounds, and (3) provides auditors with visualizations of non-compliance. We exemplify how this technique can be used to model a workaround in the process of accessing patient-identifying data in a hospital. We evaluated the model and find it particular suitable as an empirically grounded BPMN extension

WORKAROUNDS IN RETAIL WORK SYSTEMS: PREVENT, REDESIGN, ADOPT OR IGNORE?

We conducted a case study in a Dutch supermarket chain in order to explore the emergence of workarounds in the retail environment. We studied what types of workarounds occur during the use of retail information systems and how manager can handle the identified workarounds once they become aware of them. The data was acquired qualitatively through interviews, observations, and document analysis, and validated by means of an online survey. After identifying and classifying 29 workarounds, a conceptual framework was developed that links workaround features to workaround categories and then to certain actions as response to them, namely prevent, redesign, adopt and ignore. This study contributes to existing research by categorizing workarounds in an unexplored domain and developing a conceptual framework of workaround categories and re-sponses. We were able to identify patterns of relationships between types of workarounds, some of them similar to those found for other industries and others that appear to be specific to retail work systems, probably due to the inherent characteristics of retail work systems

Why Managers Tolerate Workarounds – The Role of Information Systems

Workarounds as deviations from defined routines in business processes challenge standardization and thus the performance improvements expected from information systems. Literature associates workarounds predominantly with performance losses. Only few studies report on performance improvements from workarounds. However, what characterizes situations in which managers tolerate workarounds to yield potential performance improvements? This study examines situations in which managers are able to decide whether to tolerate or to prohibit workarounds. We report on a multiple case study in two organizations and use existing research on workarounds to structure our analysis. Building on this, we show that expected efficiency gains, exposure to compliance risk and perceived process weakness have an effect on the willingness of management to tolerate workarounds. We develop a model that illustrates important aspects of situations that influence this willingness and outlines the role of information systems in understanding workarounds

A SITUATIONAL PERSPECTIVE ON WORKAROUNDS IN IT-ENABLED BUSINESS PROCESSES: A MULTIPLE CASE STUDY

Workarounds are still one of the most puzzling phenomena in business process management research and practice. From a compliance perspective, workarounds are studied as control failure and the cause for inferior process quality. From a process reengineering perspective, however, workarounds are studied as an important source of process improvement. In this paper, we advance recent theory on the emergence of workarounds to resolve this puzzle by analyzing empirical evidence from a multiple case study. Our analysis reveals that employees utilize workarounds based on a risk-benefit analysis of the situational context. If the realized benefits (efficiency gains) outweigh the situational risks (exposure of process violations), workarounds will be perceived as process improvement. Erroneous risk-benefit analysis, however, leads to exposure of the same workaround as control failure. Quite unexpectedly, we found that information systems serve as critical cus for the situational balance of benefits and risks. Our result suggests that process-instance-level workarounds are treated as options that are engaged if the situation permits, in contrast to process-level workarounds that manifest as unofficial routines. We also contribute the notion of situational risk-benefits analysis to the theory on workarounds

Plausible Pictures For Data Governance: A Narrative Network Approach

Workaround-centric data activities (WCDA) can impact data integrity/quality. Despite this, one can view WCDA as an enhancement to organisational Data Governance (DG) maturity. However, these WCDA are primarily undocumented and poorly understood. Therefore, we need a means of creating plausible pictures for DG – by modelling WCDA visually. This study draws on the theory of organisational routines to develop WCDA modelling rules. It is the first study to leverage the Narrative Network (NN) approach as a conceptual lens to model WCDA visually. We identify five WCDA modelling rules: 1) a narrative fragment must come from a process actor, 2) a narrative fragment has three attributes: actor, action & resource, 3) all attributes in a narrative fragment establish the action type, 4) a narrative fragment must contain a data activity, and 5) a narrative fragment data activity must follow a standard naming convention. In conclusion, we discuss the advantages of our approach

A Work System Perspective on Adoption Entities, Adoption Processes, and Post-Adoption Compliance and Noncompliance

This conceptual contribution responds to the invitation to the DIGIT 2015 Call for Papers “to reflect on and move forward from the dominant stream of research work on technology acceptance.” The dominant stream of research is basically about antecedents and correlates of adoption and continuation of use for hardware/software artifacts. This paper uses work system theory and several of its extensions to identify directions for adoption research that have been realized partially, but not nearly to the extent possible. It focuses on three general issues: 1) what adoption means in the context of work systems, 2) how adoption occurs, and 3) how adoption entities change after adoption, including decisions by work system participants about whether and how to comply or not comply with prescribed practices that are often taken-for-granted as the result of adoption processes

Beneficial Noncompliance and Detrimental Compliance: Expected Paths to Unintended Consequences

This paper explores the possibility that compliance and noncompliance to process specifications, software usage procedures, business rules, and best practices could be beneficial or detrimental. After introducing different types of compliance and noncompliance, it uses a simple 2 x 2 matrix to postulate four types of situations: beneficial compliance, detrimental compliance, beneficial noncompliance, and detrimental noncompliance. It provides examples that illustrate subcategories within all four possibilities, thereby bringing into question the common assumption that compliance is beneficial and noncompliance is detrimental. It presents a model that explains decisions related to intentions toward compliance and noncompliance. It concludes with implications for management and for systems analysis and design. An underlying theme throughout is that beneficial noncompliance and detrimental compliance can be viewed as expected paths to unintended consequences

Theory of Workarounds

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