Relying on the Organizational Structure to Model Workflow Processes

According to the business literature, one can classify a social organization relying on a set of wellknown structural features. Depending on the values taken by each of these features, one can conclude whether the type of a specific organization is functional, divisional, hybrid, matrix-like, or processoriented. The organization type has strong influence upon the way business processes are executed. The workflow technology, on the other hand, aims at supporting the automation of the organization processes. However, most of today’s workflow modeling techniques does not consider those structural features in order to assist designers during the modeling process. The present paper discusses the possibility of using the knowledge of the organizational structure to support the workflow modeling process.