Process Research With Digital Trace Data

Process Research With Digital Trace Data: Involving
Artefacts, Involving Context
Cologne Institute for Information Systems | University of Cologne
Prof. Dr. Jan Recker

Institute for Information Systems | Chair for Information Systems and Systems Development | Prof. Dr. Jan Recker
About my research
 I am primarily a field researcher.
 I am interested in socio-technical phenomena:
I study behaviors of individuals and organizations when dealing
with IT artefacts (such as computer devices, software, digital
information, or even models of information systems).
 Broadly speaking, I often focus on issues of process, design,
and representation, often in combination.
 My research mostly draws on quantitative, qualitative and mixed
field methods.
 My current interests include:
 systems analysis & design practices in the digital age
 digital entrepreneurship and digital venture design
 digital innovation and change in large incumbent organizations
 digitalization of organizational routines and processes
 digital solutions for a sustainable future

What is Process Scholarship?
“the dynamic study
of behavior within and between
organizations, focusing on context, activity and outcomes
that unfold over time”.
Pettigrew 2012
Pettigrew, Denyer and Murphy 2017
“Catching Reality in Flight.”

Questions in Process Scholarship
 Process questioning involves the interrogation of some
phenomena over time using the language of:
 what, who, where, why, when and how?
 Evolution and development
 Sequencing and pace
 Consequence and output
 Context and antecedents
 Dynamics and change

Processes occur on many levels
Dynamics of large, complex systems change
Strategic leadership change processes
Firm growth
Life event sequences
Career progressions
Development and change of professions
Organizational routines and their dynamics
Patterns of actions
Drift and endogenous change
Modeling of business processes
Re‐Design of business processes
IT‐driven innovations to business processes
Automation of processes
Workflow management technologies
Process mining
Sociological
focus
Technological
focus
Processes
that take
years
Processes
that take
seconds

Typical process data
 Ethnographic:
 shadowing case workers,
journaling, diary methods
 Qualitative:
 interviews and observations,
longitudinal case studies
 Quantitative:
 system-generated: time-stamped
event logs by process-aware
information systems such as SAP.
Case ID Seq Num Person Action System
A 1 HMD AssignCase Venice
A 2 GLT ReviewCase CitiSmart
A 3 GLT NoteAccountFile CitiSmart
A 4 GLT ResolveCase Venice
A 5 DIK Verify/QC Venice
B 1 HMD AssignCase Venice
B 2 IEV RequestDocs GPS
B 3 IEV ReceiveDocs FILM
B 4 IEV AdjustAcct Customs
B 5 IEV LetterToCust Word
B 6 HYC CheckFinancials Venice
B 7 HYC ResolveCase Venice
B 8 DIK Verify/QC Venice

The language of Process scholarship
- Event sequences vs Petri nets
Abbott, A. 1995.
"Sequence Analysis:
New Methods for Old
Ideas," Annual Review
of Sociology (21:1), pp.
93‐113.
van der Aalst, W. M. P.
1998. "The Application
of Petri Nets to
Workflow
Management," The
Journal of Circuits,
Systems and
Computers (8:1), pp.
21‐66.

- Narrative Networks
 Process ~ Graph(Vertices, Edges)
 The lexicon of actions becomes the vertices, V (or nodes)
 Sequentially adjacent pairs of actions become the edges, E (or ties)
Entry
Pentland, Hærem & Hillison
(2010) “Comparing
Organizational Routines as
Recurrent Patterns of
Action,” Organization
Studies, 31(7), 917‐940.

- Process models
Recker, J., Rosemann, M.,
Indulska, M., and Green,
P. 2009. "Business
Process Modeling: A
Comparative Analysis,"
Journal of the
Association for
Information Systems
(10:4), pp. 333‐363.

Traditional process scholarship focus
 Defining features:
 recognizable,
 repetitive,
 patterns of interdependent
actions
 carried out by multiple actors
 Usual Emphasis:
 Context-Process-Outcome
Goh, K. T., and Pentland, B. T. 2020. "From Actions to
Paths to Patterning: Toward a Dynamic Theory of
Patterning in Routines," Academy of Management
Journal (62).
Pettigrew, A. M. 2012. "Context and
Action in the Transformation of the Firm:
A Reprise," Journal of Management
Studies (49:7), pp. 1304‐1328.
Feldman, M. S., and Pentland, B. T. 2003.
"Reconceptualizing Organizational Routines as a
Source of Flexibility and Change," Administrative
Science Quarterly (48:1), pp. 94‐118.

Orlikowski, W.J., and Scott, S.V. "Sociomateriality: Challenging
the Separation of Technology, Work and Organization," The
Academy of Management Annals (2:1) 2008, pp 433‐474.

Current phenomena/trends about
processes
 Autonomous tools for procedural work
 Artificial intelligence for performing tasks/processes
 Man-machine collaboration (e.g., in medical diagnostics)
 Robotic process automation
 Process mining and data science
 …

Procedural Generation in Digital Products
Source: Ubisoft
Seidel, S., Berente, N., Martinez, B., Lindberg, A.,
Nickerson, J. V., & Lyytinen, K. (2018). Succeeding
with autonomous tools in systems design:
Reflective practice & ubisoft's ghost recon
wildlands project. IEEE Computer, 51(10), 16‐23.
Werder, K., Seidel, S., Recker, J., Berente, N.,
Kundert‐Gibbs, J., Abboud, N., Benzeghadi, Y.
(2020): Data‐Driven, Data‐Informed, Data‐
Augmented: How Ubisoft’s Ghost Recon Wildlands
Live Unit Uses Data for Continuous Product
Innovation. California Management Review, Vol.
63.

The digitalization of processes presents
both an opportunity and challenge
 Opportunities
 Because processes, practices
and routines increasingly leave
digital traces, new possibilities
emerge to study these
processual phenomena in
context.
 Context matters to theorizing,
context matters to IS
phenomena
 Sociomateriality, ensemble
views, recombination, imbrication
 Challenges
 Process scholarship has
focused on actions first, actors
second, technology… not at all.
 The conceptual lexicon of process
scholarship does not speak to
technology having agency.
 Analyses of process data (or
digital trace data) is not well
suited to explore in situ
phenomena

Process scholarship literature has been
slow in recognizing either challenge or
opportunity.
Pentland, B.T., Recker, J., and Wyner, G. "Rediscovering Handoffs," Academy of Management
Discoveries (3:3) 2017, doi:amd.2016.0018.

Example: Re-discovering Handoffs
Pentland, B.T., Recker, J., and Wyner, G. "Rediscovering Handoffs," Academy of Management
Discoveries (3:3) 2017, doi:amd.2016.0018.

Challenges of using digital trace data:
The lexica for process analysis do not speak context
Abbott, A. 1995.
"Sequence Analysis:
New Methods for Old
Ideas," Annual Review
of Sociology (21:1), pp.
93‐113.
van der Aalst, W. M. P.
1998. "The Application
of Petri Nets to
Workflow
Management," The
Journal of Circuits,
Systems and
Computers (8:1), pp.
21‐66.

Entry
The lexica for process analysis do not speak context
Recker, J., Rosemann, M., Indulska, M., and Green, P.
2009. "Business Process Modeling: A Comparative
Analysis," Journal of the Association for Information
Systems (10:4), pp. 333‐363.
Pentland, Hærem & Hillison
(2010) “Comparing
Organizational Routines as
Recurrent Patterns of
Action,” Organization
Studies, 31(7), 917‐940.

ACTION ACTOR
OTHER
ACTORS
LOCATION BELIEFS INTENT
LEGAL
SYSTEM
TOOLS
INPUTS/
OUTPUTS …
ACTION ACTOR
OTHER
ACTORS
LEGAL
SYSTEM
TOOLS
INPUTS/
OUTPUTS …
The possibility of digital trace data:
Capturing context of situated actions
ACTION ACTOR
TECHNOL
OGY
LEGAL
SYSTEM
TOOLS
INPUTS/
OUTPUTS …
The significance of any action or event…
… depends on the context

Physician
LPN
Clin Tech
Admin
Staff
Resident
One day at the U. of Rochester dermatology clinic

One day at the U. of Rochester
dermatology clinic
Clock time
Event time

How might we visualize and analyze this
data?
Social Network
(relationships between involved actors)
Narrative Network / Process model
(relationships between involved actions)

How might we visualize and analyze this
data? Contextualized Narrative Network
(actions carried out by actors using technologies)

Contextualizing events in different ways changes the
structure of the process; it helps disentangling what‘s
going on. Absence highlights presence.
(a) Narrative network (b) Narrative network incorporating “location”

The possibility of digital trace data:
Understanding generativity of digital innovations

New technology is routine capability.
“Technology only comes alive in the world to the extent that it is
used in a routine (“technology-in-use”).”
Burt Swanson, 2019

Affordances are a relational concept that
bridges actor-centric with artifact-centric
work

Basic idea:
Describe nodes in process graphs in more detail
Processes are not just patterns of action over time.
Actors and artifacts are always present
Context always matters.

Sequences of affordances allow you to understand
why some technologies have been so „innovative“
Mobile phone Smartphone

What we can learn about technology
innovation
 Technology can add/remove nodes.
 Technology cannot directly add/remove edges but it can
influence them.
 Technology is more generative if it creates more paths.

We need richer data that we could use.

We need more flexible analysis tools
Threadnet
‐ A tool for analyzing and visualizing patterns in processual phenomena

ThreadNet weaves threads into Networks
- http://routines.broad.msu.edu/ThreadNet/
 Trace along each thread to identify adjacent pairs of events
 Sequentially adjacent pairs are the edges in the network
1, 3, 6, 4 ThreadNet
Coded performance
fragment
Narrative Network

ThreadNet weaves Threads into
Networks
With increasing amounts of digital trace data, it can be a big help…
1,3,6,4,7,2,3,5,4,8,9
1,3,5,6,4,7,2,3,5,4,8,9
1,3,6,7,4,5,2,3,2,5,4,8,9
1,2,3,6,4,7,2,4,3,5,4,8,9
1,3,6,5,4,3,5,4,7,8,9
1,3,6,4,7,2,3,5,4,8,9
1,3,5,6,4,7,2,3,5,4,8,9
1,3,6,7,4,5,2,3,2,5,4,8,9
1,2,3,6,4,7,2,4,3,5,4,8,9
1,3,6,5,2,3,5,4,7,8,9
ThreadNet
Coded performances Narrative Network

Challenges of digital trace data:
Process data is not process.

The Paradox
“The analysis of digital trace data for developing process theory
is mostly devoid of the context that is so paramount to the
unfolding and situatedness of the processes that scholars seek to
explain.”

Approaches for handling digital traces cannot handle
context well.
 When confronted with digital trace data, qualitative scholars tend to
become overwhelmed by the sheer size of these datasets. Ethnographic
fieldwork allows researchers to access context through immersion or
embeddedness - but it is ill-equipped to handle the large volume of data
traces now collected and stored on digital platforms.
 Digital trace data is organic, not designed, meaning it is inherently
susceptible to validity issues.
 Digital trace data can be both heterogeneous and unstructured,
making it difficult to analyze and confront the meaning of digital trace data
as a conceptualization of the events and mechanisms it records.

Approaches for handling digital traces cannot handle
context well.
 Computational social science
 has the difficulty of analyzing complex and messy social phenomena,
and the tendency of researchers to oversimplify (naturalize) these
complex relationships, thereby curtailing the search for meaning
 Blended methods
 complement computational analyses of digital trace data with deep
qualitative inquiry to account for, and understand, the context(s) in
which that data is generated
 Or, make computational tools conceptually more flexible to let context
“come into” the data.

Brief Conclusion
1. Analysis or theory starts with language: process scholarship
needs more expressive grammars to describe process
phenomena.
2. Both empirical and computational methods are limited;
research designs need to mitigate the different biases.
3. Digital trace data is process data and it is not. We need pay
more attention to the separation of phenomena, data, and
model.

Pitching our idea of narrative networks
and the tool Threadnet
 Contextualized process graphs involving technology on an
equal footing provides a processual, relational language that
speaks directly to Digitalization phenomena
 Generativity
 Multiplicity
 Possibility for action, possibility for change
 Relationality
 Material agency

Papers and Work-in-Progress
 Pentland, B. T., Recker, J., Wyner, G., and Ryan-Wolfe, J. 2020 “Incorporating context
into the analysis of processual phenomena with digital trace data," Journal of the
Association for Information Systems, In Press.
 Pentland, B. T., Recker, J., and Wyner, G. 2017. "Rediscovering Handoffs," Academy of
Management Discoveries (3:3), pp. 284-301.
 Pentland, B. T., Recker, J., and Kim, I. 2017. "Capturing Reality in Flight? Empirical Tools
for Strong Process Theory," in: 38th International Conference on Information Systems.
Seoul, Republic of Korea: Association for Information Systems.
 Pentland, B. T., Yoo Y., Recker, J., and Kim, I. "Towards a dynamic network theory of
organizing and emerging technology," Organization Science, under review.

Prof. Dr. Jan Recker, PhD
Chaired Professor for Information Systems and Systems
Development
Cologne Institute for Information Systems
University of Cologne
email jan.recker@wiso.uni-koeln.de
web www.janrecker.com, www.is4.uni-koeln.de
twitter janrecker

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