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This paper suggests a new type of enterprise models called fractal enterprise models (FEM), with accompanying methodological support for their design. FEM shows interconnections between the business processes in an enterprise by connecting them to the assets they use and manage. Assets considered in the model could be tangible (buildings, heavy machinery, etc.) and intangible (employees, business process definitions, etc.). A FEM model is built by using two types of patterns called archetypes: a process-assets archetype that connects a process with assets used in it, and an asset-processes archetype that connects an asset with processes aimed to manage this asset (e.g., hiring people, or servicing machinery). Alternating these patterns creates a fractal structure that makes relationships between various parts of the enterprise explicit. FEM can be used for different purposes, including finding a majority of the processes in an enterprise and planning business change or radical transformation. Besides discussing FEM and areas of its usage, the paper presents results from a completed project in order to test the practical usefulness of FEM and its related methodological support. Communicated by Dr. Selmin Nurcan.

Enterprise survival is about maintaining an identity that is separate from other enterprises. We define flexibility as the ability to change without losing identity. The identity of an enterprise can be analyzed as a set of norms and beliefs about these norms held by its stakeholders, such as customers, employees, suppliers, and investors. Business processes and their support systems maintain invariants that are the result of compromises between the often conflicting norms and beliefs of these stakeholders. We formalize these invariants as values in a state space. Identifying a minimum set of invariants provides a basis for defining flexible processes and support systems. We illustrate the use of this framework with production business process support (BPS) systems.

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Any organization in subject of changes in the environment, or having the desire to improve, needs to change their processes, personnel and their use of resources. Changes, may they be called for by external threats or opportunities or internal strengths or weaknesses, take their departure in an organizations existing capabilities. To support change, there is thus a fundamental need to understand and analyse an organizations capabilities in order to perform changes. In this paper we present an approach to support organizational change by the use of a capability based recursive analysis, and a set of improvement patterns. The recursive analysis is based on resource types, and capability sub-types. We illustrate the approach by using several examples taken from the industry.

PurposeOrganizations of today are becoming ever more focused on their business processes. This has resulted in an increasing interest in using best practices for business process re‐engineering. Two problems arise in connection to using best practices: how to find a best practice that suits particular purposes, and how to ensure that the process from the best practice has the same nature as the process under re‐engineering. The purpose of this paper is to address these issues.Design/methodology/approachThe paper suggests using business process patterns, i.e. relatively high level business process models, for making near formal comparison of business processes. The paper analyzes widespread modeling techniques to find out which of them suits the task of building patterns for comparison. Based on this analysis, the state‐flow modeling technique is chosen and first steps towards formal definition of business process patterns based on this technique are suggested.FindingsA pattern is defined based on the notions of state space, goal, as a surface in the state space, and valid movements towards the goal. A thinkable procedure of constructing patterns is demonstrated on two real‐life examples. A hypothetical procedure for comparing process is suggested but it still needs to be verified in practice.Originality/valueThe originality of the paper is the way the patterns are formulated and the underlying model, the state‐flow view of processes, upon which the patterns are founded.

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