Business processes - attempts to find a definition

Definitions of business process given in much of the literature on Business Process Management are limited in depth and their related models of business processes are correspondingly constrained. After giving a brief history of the progress of business process modeling techniques from production systems to the office environment, this paper proposes that most definitions are based on machine metaphor type explorations of a process. While these techniques are often rich and illuminating it is suggested that they are too limited to express the true nature of business processes that need to develop and adapt to today's challenging environment. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.