In Search for a Good Theory: Commuting between Research and Practice in Business Process Domain

Kurt Levin's statement “There is nothing more practical than a good theory” says not so much about what is good for practice as what it means to have a good theory. There exist a number of competing theories in the business process domain. The current paper is devoted to one of them that lies outside the mainstream direction. The purpose of the paper is not to present the theory as such, but to present the stages of how it was developed with the aim to become a “good” theory from the practical point of view. The paper is written as an experience report and goes through different stages of the development where research efforts where intermixed with practical tests. The theory in question is the state-oriented view on business processes. The basic idea of this theory lies in application of the general principles from the theory of dynamic systems to the business domain. The main direction for practice in the theoretical development is creating IT-support for loosely structured business processes. Besides giving the history of the related research and practical efforts, the paper discusses the lessons learned that can be of interest for the development of other theoretical models in the business process domain.