Work, Workflow and Information Systems

This volume brings together several perspectives on the nature of work processes in enterprises and how information systems can best support these processes. The genesis of this idea was the shared interests of the authors in how enterprises improve and change. The shared belief is that change of enterprises relates to change of work processes and the success of such changes relates to how work processes are supported by information systems. Thus, the papers in this volume address both the nature of work and the design of information systems to support work. This volume is divided into two main sections: work and workflow, and information systems. There are three papers in each section. The disciplines represented across these six papers include management, engineering, computing, and architecture. These four disciplines pursue work, workflow, and information systems from quite different perspectives - management to represent business practices and processes, engineering to represent the physical flows in the system, computing to represent the information flows, and architecture to represent human flows within and among physical spaces. Enterprises, of course, include all these types of flows.