Why Rosetta Can’t Dance: The Combinatorics of Standardizing Inter-organizational Service Processes

Interorganizational processes have been described as an intricately choreographed dance. Standardized workflow serves as a medium for participants to exchange complimentary moves that comprise the ‘dance’. Attempts to develop open process standards, such as Rosetta Net, have had limited success in finding wide-spread adoption. We argue that standardization of interorganizational business processes, previously viewed as aiding interorganizational collaboration, can impede collaboration in service contexts. We show that the modeling methods used to standardize inter-organizational processes fails to account for the impact such standardization has on managerial flexibility.