Integrating risks in business process models with value focused process engineering

As enterprise systems develop, the integration of various business management dimensions becomes increasingly important. However, historical disciplinary boundaries between information systems and management sciences can obstruct this path to integration. For example, risk management is generally considered as a business process within process engineering, while in the context of management sciences risk is treated as a threat to business objectives that needs to be minimized. Both views are essential for a complete approach to identifying, understanding and managing risks in order to optimally meet business requirements. In this paper, we address the need for a holistic business view of risk management in the enterprise systems space by drawing on the strengths of the respective disciplines and identifying links between their complementary views of risk, which enables us to integrate these apparently diverging views. Through the application of value-focused process engineering principles to risk management models, we develop a framework that extends the capabilities of existing enterprise systems and enables risk-oriented process management which incorporates a multi-disciplinary view of risk. The proposed framework is illustrated in the context of a critical administrative process in a university to demonstrate the practical application of and the resulting benefits from the use of this framework.