Business Process Simulation Roots in Information Processing View of Organizations.

This study aims to highlight the relations between Business Process Simulation (BPS) and organizational theory, in particular the view of organizations as information processors. Although BPS emerged as a practice-oriented set of techniques without strong linkages to organizational theories, contingency theory concepts are clearly embedded into BPS approach. For that reason, it is possible to state that BPS approach inherits the strong constructs of the information processing view of organizations. In addition to that, classical simulation steps can be clearly identified as part of the structure of a BPS implementation. In order to show the differences among the application of BPS and of the most widespread simulation techniques (e.g. System Dynamics, agent based approaches), a comparison table is developed. This study advocates for a deeper understanding of the potentialities of BPS and its impact on organizational design.