The tension between business process modelling and flexibility: Revealing multiple dimensions with a sociomaterial approach

Business process modelling has contradictory effects on flexibility: on the one hand, recent to process modelling in organisations have been used to pursue flexibility as a goal. On the other hand, the display of organisational practices in models and to these models might reduce the degree of organisational flexibility. In order shed new light on this paradox, this article adopts a sociomaterial analytical approach on the Actor-Network Theory to develop a multidimensional understanding of flexibility a relational effect of sociomaterial networks. A case study, carried out of a process project within a large aircraft maintenance corporation, shows that the influence process modelling on flexibility is not confined to the elements explicitly modelled the diagrams (‘what’), but also span informal aspects of work practices (‘how’) and the of accountability in the organisation (‘who’). Therefore, the relative degree of flexibility emerges from process modelling should be analysed along each dimension produced the sociomaterial networks of the organisation.