Analysis of social relations among organizational units derived from process models and redesign of organization structure

Despite surging interests in analyzing business processes, there are few scientific approaches to analysis and redesign of organizational structures which can greatly affect the performance of business processes. This paper presents a method for deriving and analyzing organizational relations from process models using social network analysis techniques. Process models contain information on who performs which processes and activities, along with the assignment of organizational units such as departments and roles to related activities. To derive social relations between organizational units from process models, three types of metrics are formally defined: transfer of work metrics, subcontracting metrics, and cooperation metrics. By applying these metrics, various relations among organizational units can be derived and analyzed. To verify the proposed method and metrics, they are applied to standard process models of the semiconductor and electronic, and automotive industry in Korea. This paper presents a taxonomy for diagnosing organization structure based on the presented approach. The paper also discusses how to combine analyses in the taxonomy for redesign of organizational structures.