Inter-organizational Performance and Business Process Management in Collaborative Networks

In the global economy, collaboration is no longer an option but a requirement for the organizations that want to achieve and maintain the competitive advantage on the market. The society based on knowledge and innovation, globalization and increased competition are the stimulating factors for switching from a traditional organization to an extended organization and further to the organization connected into a collaborative network. The organization networks have many advantages but also face challenges and problems mainly linked to the complexity of the collaborative environment. One of the main challenges of the organization networks is raised by the inter-organization processes. The complexity of these collaborative processes makes them difficult to model and represent them in a form that can be understood by electronic computing systems. Collaborative processes performance representation, automation and management require a good understanding of collaboration impact on business processes. This paper identifies the main characteristics of collaborative business processes, classifies them on several criteria, identifies possible approaches for management and implementation and proposes a mathematical model for measuring inter-organizational business process performance.