What is Interorganizational Workflow

The increasing complexity of products and services encourages more and more companies to form collaborative networks. As these companies are independent organizations there often is an issue of governance. We suggest a possible architecture for such a business network that proposes a frame contract as the principal means of coordination and describes how such a contract can be designed and enacted. Often frame contracts are written in natural language which makes it difficult to govern the network effectively and efficiently. We therefore introduce a structured method that can support the design of such an agreement and ensure that its terms are observed in business transactions. We interpret governance as the management of workflows between the organizations, hence the contract consists primarily of business process models. We propose a method to negotiate these models among the member organizations of the network and to enact them with the help of an interorganizational workflow system.