Inheritance of Interorganizational Workflows to Enable Business-to-Business E-Commerce

The World-Wide-Web is fast becoming a crucial medium for electronic commerce. Many companies are now involved in on-line retailing of goods and services to consumers through the Web. In some industries, business partnerships are being fostered in order to broaden the scope of their markets. One example is the telecommunications industry, where changes in business structure, spirited by deregulation, have resulted in alliances amongst different communications providers, including new players like the utilities and entertainment providers. In this environment, business processes may involve multiple co-operating entities and, supporting such interorganizational business processes can be achieved through the use of workflow management systems. In this paper, we present an approach for designing interorganizational workflows that supports co-operation of business partners, while preserving the autonomy of the partner organizations.