Regulation Based Linking of Strategic Goals and Business Processes

To be able to make changes to a business process, it is necessary to understand how the process supports the strategic goals of the business and how changes to the goals may impact the process and vice versa. This paper explains the relations between strategic goals and business processes by adopting a regulation point of view. This point of view holds that the main property of business systems is their constancy. A business achieves constancy by regulating its relationships with other business entities. We model this constancy with maintenance goals which could be seen as a more precise definition of strategic goals. We then link these maintenance goals to achievement goals that correspond to operational goals. We further link these achievement goals with the business processes designed to achieve them.