This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Raghu, T. S. Articles by Rao, H. R. Search for Related Content

Toward an Integration of Agent- and Activity-Centric Approaches in Organizational Process Modeling: Incorporating Incentive Mechanisms

Department of Information Systems, W. P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University, P.O. Box 874606, Tempe, Arizona 85287
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York 14260
325 Jacobs Hall, Management Science and Systems Department, State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York 14260
raghu.santanam{at}asu.edu
bharat{at}cse.buffalo.edu
mgmtrao{at}acsu.buffalo.edu

This paper presents an approach to organizational modeling that combines both agent-centric and activity-centric approaches. Activity-centric approaches to process modeling capture the mechanistic components of a process (including aspects of workflow, decision, and information), but agent-centric approaches capture specific aspects of the human component. In this paper, we explore an integrative viewpoint in which the transactional aspects of agent-centric concerns—for example, economic incentives for agents to perform—are integrated with decision and informational aspects of a process. To illustrate issues in this approach, we focus on modeling incentive mechanisms in a specific sales process and present results from an extensive simulation experiment. Our results highlight the importance of considering the effects of incentives when decision and informational aspects of a process undergo changes.

Key Words: organizational processes; activity-centric modeling; agent-centric modeling; simulation; incentive mechanisms; workflow; information structure
History: This paper was received on December 20, 2002.