Guidelines To Flux Between Conceptual Models

Digital Business Ecosystems (DBEs) should remain consistent between two complementary requirement perspectives when an ecosystem evolves or is (re)designed: (1) the business process perspective (e.g., BPMN) and (2) the business value perspective (e.g., e3value). Although they address different stakeholder concerns, these perspectives partially overlap, and changes in one view can invalidate assumptions in the other. In practice, process knowledge is often explicit, whereas the value model frequently remains implicit—even though technological disruption typically affects value creation and capture first. To support coherent analysis and redesign, we propose a design-oriented, bidirectional set of guidelines to construct models across the two perspectives: (i) construct an e3value model from a given BPMN model and (ii) construct a BPMN model from a given e3value model. The guidelines include applicability conditions and example-driven procedures to identify candidate correspondences and to distinguish operational coordination flows from economic value transfers. We evaluate the approach through multiple case applications and empirical studies with domain experts and trained modelers. Across these studies, guideline-supported construction yields models that are closer to the intended value–process structure than unguided modeling, while also making key design assumptions (e.g., actor autonomy, reciprocity, and plausible ordering) explicit. The dissertation contributes reusable construction guidelines for aligning value and process models in both directions, together with empirical evidence and documented limitations that inform their practical use for eliciting value models from processes and operationalizing value exchanges as coherent process designs suitable for (system) implementation.