The atoms, molecules and fibers of organizations

The increasing demands concerning the modifiability and connectivity of business processes cannot be met adequately anymore by relying on best practices only. There is an urgent need for a reference conceptual framework for studying, modeling, analyzing and designing business processes. The Language-Action Perspective (LAP), in particular Habermas’ theory of Communicative Action offers a sound and rigid foundation for such a framework. In this paper, the DEMO-framework is presented. It builds on the LAP-based theoretical foundation of the DEMO methodology (Demo Engineering Methodology for Organizations). Several other LAP-based frameworks have been proposed in the past years. They are evaluated in a comparative review with the DEMO-framework. Several shortcomings of these frameworks are revealed and discussed. The practical applicability of the DEMO-framework i s demonstrated using a small example.