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Despite the recent innovations in e-Learning, much development is needed to ensure better learning experience for everyone and bridge the research gap in the current state of the art e-Learning artefacts. Contemporary e-learning artefacts possess various limitations as follows. First, they offer inadequate variations of adaptivity, since their recommendations are limited to e-learning resources, peers or communities. Second, they are often overwhelmed with technology at the expense of proper pedagogy and learning theories underpinning e-learning practices. Third, they do not comprehensively capture the e-learning experiences as their focus shifts to e-learning activities instead of e-learning processes. In reality, learning is a complex process that includes various activities and interactions between different roles to achieve certain gaols in a continuously evolving environment. Fourth, they tend more towards legacy systems and lack the agility and flexibility in their structure and design. To respond to the above limitations, this research aims at investigating the effectiveness of combining three advanced technologies (i.e., Business Process Modelling and Enactment, Semantics and Service Oriented Computing – SOC–) with learning pedagogy in order to enhance the e-learner experience. The key design artefact of this research is the development of the HeLPS e-Learning Framework – Hybrid e-Learning Framework that is Process-based, Semantically-enriched and Service Oriented-enabled. In this framework, a generic e-learning process has been developed bottom-up based on surveying a wide range of e-learning models (i.e., practical artefacts) and their underpinning pedagogies/concepts (i.e., theories); and then forming a generic e-learning process. Furthermore, an e-Learning Meta-Model has been developed in order to capture the semantics of e-learning domain and its processes. Such processes have been formally modelled and dynamically enacted using a service-oriented enabled architecture. This framework has been evaluated using a concern-based evaluation employing both static and dynamic approaches. The HeLPS e-Learning Framework along with its components have been evaluated by applying a data-driven approach and artificially-constructed case study to check its effectiveness in capturing the semantics, enriching e-learning processes and deriving services that can enhance the e-learner experience. Results revealed the effectiveness of combining the above-mentioned technologies in order to enhance the e-learner experience. Also, further research directions have been suggested. This research contributes to enhancing the e-learner experience by making the e-learning artefacts driven by pedagogy and informed by the latest technologies. One major novel contribution of this research is the introduction of a layered architectural framework (i.e., HeLPS) that combines business process modelling and enactment, semantics and SOC together. Another novel contribution is adopting the process-based approach in e-learning domain through: identifying these processes and developing a generic business process model from a set of related e-learning business process models that have the same goals and associated objectives. A third key contribution is the development of the e-Learning Meta-Model, which captures a high-abstract view of learning domain and encapsulates various domain rules using the Semantic Web Rule Language. Additional contribution is promoting the utilisation of Service-Orientation in e-learning through developing a semantically-enriched approach to identify and discover web services from e-learning business process models. Fifth, e-Learner Experience Model (eLEM) and e-Learning Capability Maturity Model (eLCMM) have been developed, where the former aims at identifying and quantifying the e-learner experience and the latter represents a well-defined evolutionary plateau towards achieving a mature e-learning process from a technological perspective. Both models have been combined with a new developed data-driven Validation and Verification Model to develop a Concern-based Evaluation Approach for e-Learning artefacts, which is considered as another contribution.

Organisations face ever growing complexity in the business environment and use processes to deliver value in a stable, sustainable and controllable way. However complexity in the business environment is threatening the stability of processes and forcing their continuing evolution in ever shorter time cycles, which then creates significant management challenges. Addressing complexity requires a change in management thinking about processes. The research explores the nature of complexity, how businesses respond to it, and the consequent impact on process complexity. The research reviews the notion of complexity and its relevance to organisations, business processes and knowledge contexts. The research focuses on knowledge intensive firms, as these exhibit several of the features and allow early application of the approach suggested by this thesis. The research draws upon concepts from several fields including complexity and complex systems, business process management, and knowledge management. This thesis addresses the question: “How can organisations address the complexity of knowledge intensive business processes?” In answering the question the thesis argues the need to integrate multiple perspectives involved in managing such processes, proposes an approach to complex knowledge intensive business processes that reduces the management challenge, and argues the need to develop an agile shared knowledge context in support of the approach. This thesis develops a theoretical framework consisting of a set of hypotheses rooted in the literature, and then proposes an approach to addressing complex knowledge intensive business processes based upon these hypotheses. Then,through a series of QDS investigations and action research cycles, this thesis tests the hypotheses, further develops the approach and examines its application in different problem domains in multiple organisations. This thesis then discusses the process and the outcomes of applying the approach, identifies its limitations, assesses its contribution to knowledge and suggests directions for further research.

The need for construction to change its traditional working practices has been repeatedly expressed in government, industry, and academic publications. The Internet has been a major catalyst for change in most industry sectors, including the construction sector. The implementation of Internet-based technologies, such as ecommerce for achieving business targets, bring about changes in an organisation, its current practices, systems, processes and workflows. It is therefore important to evaluate the business process implications of adopting e-commerce in construction organisations. This was the focus of this study. The early stages of the research established the possible benefits, barriers, and drivers for the adoption of e-commerce technologies within construction. This was done by conducting an industry-wide survey that explored attitudes, current usage, barriers and enablers of IT and e-commerce within the UK construction sector. Survey results indicated that the exact benefits of using e-commerce within the construction industry were not known and more needed to be done to establish the effects of incorporating e-commerce applications into construction business processes and to demonstrate the opportunities of e-commerce for construction. To address this need a typical business process model that used the principles of business process re-engineering and demonstrated opportunities for e-commerce, was developed. Using this model it was possible to illustrate how, with the use of ecommerce applications, different members of the construction supply chain could derive business benefits and overcome traditional process inefficiencies. In order to effectively adopt e-commerce technologies in construction, companies may have to reengineer their current working methods, which could lead to a step change in current work practices. To facilitate such a step change it was essential to study and document the impact of specific e-commerce applications on their current end-user business processes. Case studies were conducted for this purpose. The case study findings showed that the end-user companies had accrued several business benefits from using e-commerce tools. Issues related to management buy-in and organisational culture were the main barriers to the wider use of e-commerce within the construction industry. The case studies and earlier findings indicated that e-commerce is 'here to stay' and it will not be long before it becomes an industry norm. Taking this into account, construction companies who are currently using, and those who have yet to use, e-commerce tools need to take measures to successfully adopt and benefit from these tools. It is important for companies that seek to adopt ecommerce to assess their 'e-readiness' for adopting e-commerce tools to ensure a productive and beneficial implementation of these tools. To address this need an ereadiness model for construction organisations and a prototype application, VERDICT, that assess e-readiness were developed and implemented. The model is based on the premise that for any company to be e-ready, its management, people, process and technology have to be e-ready in order to derive maximum business benefits. The research findings indicate that the use of e-commerce is still in its infancy within the construction industry. The current use of e-commerce has resulted in process automation, however, there is no evidence of process re-engineering. Such practices, although beneficial in the short-term, can have long-term implications in that the end-users are not necessarily making full use of the technology and hence not deriving full benefits from it. The model and e-readiness assessment prototype developed as part of this study will enable construction organisations to successfully adopt e-commerce and exploit its potential.

This doctoral thesis presents novel technological and systematic solutions to improve business process change practices and solve regulatory policy implementations in central banks that encounter inefficiencies and shortcomings due to multidimensional constraints and complex setups. Central banks deal with complicated relationships (other central banks, commercial banks, consumers, and exogenous bodies) that require a sophisticated tool that can provide constant measurements for each node. The nature of these multi-actor challenges in the global regulatory financial systems suggests an information systems solution. This thesis consists of six publications, one under review (P6), contributes to the research area to: (1) develop a framework to integrate a private cloud computing network with standardised, automated and integrated features that would provide regulators and practitioners with a new method to enhance regulatory reporting system; (2) develop a systematic method to elicit the required organisational business process change factors that would facilitate the development of a hierarchical change management structure framework; (3) propose a computable of hierarchical change management structure framework for BPC decision management problems that are generated explicitly from improper decisions; (4) offer a novel computational impact analysis framework to assist with regulatory policy implementation that encounters informational asymmetries and information quality anomalies; (5) suggest an extended policy life-cycle management framework, including the identifications of vital policy quality attributes; (6) adopting the hybrid of hierarchical change management structure and stochastic gradient descent Models to optimise regulatory policies. The proposed hybrid model includes developing a proof-of-concept system called “computational regulatory policy change governance system” that captures all the changes and represent regulated entities’ information.

Data-driven workflows, of which IBM's Business Artifacts are a prime exponent, have been successfully deployed in practice, adopted in industrial standards, and have spawned a rich body of research in academia, focused primarily on static analysis. This thesis represents a significant advance on the problem of verifying data-driven workflows in two major aspects.First, this thesis introduces Hierarchical Artifact Systems (HAS), a much richer and more realistic model than in previous work incorporating core elements of IBM's successful Guard-Stage-Milestone model. In particular, the HAS model features task hierarchy, concurrency, and richer artifact data. It also allows database key and foreign key dependencies, as well as arithmetic constraints. The results show decidability of verification and establish its complexity under a set of reasonable restrictions, making use of novel techniques including a hierarchy of Vector Addition Systems and a variant of quantifier elimination tailored to this context.Second, this thesis bridges the gap between the theory and practice of data-driven workflow verification with two successful implementations, SpinArt and VERIFAS. SpinArt is a practical verifier based on the classical model-checking tool Spin which can verify a core subset of the HAS model. The implementation includes nontrivial optimizations and achieves good performance on real-world business process examples. VERIFAS further bridges the gap with a specialized implementation built from scratch.It verifies within seconds linear-time temporal properties over both real-world and synthetic workflows of complexity in the range recommended by software engineering practice. Compared to SpinArt, VERIFAS not only supports a model with richer data manipulations but also outperforms it by over an order of magnitude. VERIFAS' good performance is due to a novel symbolic representation approach and a family of specialized optimizations. To the best of our knowledge, these implementations are the first implementations of practical significance of artifact verifiers with full support for unbounded data.

Conveo was XYZ’s partner and announced its intension to disengage from the partnership. XYZ made a decision to change its partner from Conveo to CGX for print and order fulfillment of their marketing materials. XYZ self-accessed the sales tax with Conveo and provided Cenveo a MN direct pay permit so Cenveo had the proper documentation to omit sales tax from the invoices sent to XYZ. The business process described above was intended to be leveraged with the transition to CGX. During the transition of suppliers from Cenveo to CGX, CGX was purchased by RRD, which is also a 3rd party business supplier of XYZ. The existing business process between XYZ and RRD for print materials, warehouse inventory, and order fulfillment services does not utilize the direct pay permit for tax. Since XYZ was not allowed to have two different processes of applying sales tax with a single supplier, there was a need to have a consistent process. A decision was made to discontinue using the MN direct pay permit with RRD. The intent of the project is to implement a standard process for calculating sales tax for the print, order fulfillment, and related services of marketing and verify the results by doing extensive testing using Quality Center Testing includes vendor’s sales tax assessment for all activity completed for XYZ. The objective of the testing is to ensure XYZ’s “approved” business and system requirements have been satisfied through the combination of various application interactions and business processes.

Business process management has grown into a mature discipline supported by a large number of commercial and open source products, collectively referred to as Business Process Management (BPM) systems. BPM systems store the process instance information in a physical storage known as Process Instance Repository. In an organisation several BPMS products can co-exist and work alongside each other. Each one of these BPM tools has its own definition of process instances, creating a heterogeneous environment. This reduces interoperability between business process management systems and increases the effort involved in analysing the data. In this thesis, we propose a common model for business process instances, named Business Process Instance Model (BPIM), which provides a holistic view of business process instances generated from multiple systems. BPIM consists of visual notations and their meta data schema. It captures three dimensions of process instances: process execution paths, instance data provenance and meta data. BPIM aims to provide an abstract layer between the process instance repository and BPM engines, leading to common understanding of business process instances.

A business process (BP) is a collection of activities and services assembled together to accomplish a business goal. Business process management (BPM) refers to the man- agement and support for a collection of inter-related business processes, which has been playing an essential role in all enterprises. Business practitioners today face enormous difficulties in managing data for BPs due to the fact that the data for BP execution is scattered across databases for enterprise, auxiliary data stores managed by the BPM sys- tems, and even file systems (e.g., definition of BP models). Moreover, current data and business process modeling approaches leave associations of persistent data in databases and data in BPs to the implementation level with little abstraction. Implementing busi- ness logic involves data access from and to database often demands high development efforts.In the current study, we conceptualize the data used in BPs by capturing all needed information for a BP throughout its execution into a “universal artifact”. The concep- tualization provides a foundation for the separation of BP execution and BP data. With the new framework, the data analysis can be carried out without knowing the logic of BPs and the modification of the BP logics can be directly applied without understanding the data structure.Even though universal artifacts provide convenient data access for processes, the data is yet stored in the underlying database and the relationship between data in artifacts and the one in database is still undefined. In general, a way to link the data of these two data sources is needed. we propose a data mapping language aiming to bridge BP data and enterprise database, so that the BP designers only need to focus on business data instead of how to manipulate data by accessing the database. We formulate syntactic conditions upon specified mapping in order that updates upon database or BP data can be properly propagated.In database area, mapping database to a view has been widely studied In recently years, data exchange method extends the notion of database views to a target database (i.e., multiple views) by using a set of conjunctive queries called “tuple generating de- pendency” (tgd). Tgd is a language that is easy to understand/specify, expressive, and decidable for a wide range of properties, which is ideal as a mapping language. Naturally, if both enterprise database and artifacts are represented as relational database, we can take advantage of data exchange technology to bridge enterprise database and artifacts by using tgd as well. Therefore, we re-visit the mapping and update propagation problem under the relational setting.In addition to the data management for a single BP, it is equivalently essential to un- derstand how messages and data should be exchanged among multiple collaborative BPs. With the introduction of artifacts, data is explicitly modeled that can be used in a collab- orative setting. Unfortunately, today’s BP collaboration languages (either orchestration or choreography) do not emphasize on how data is evolved during execution. More- over, the existing languages always assume each participant type has a single participant instance. Therefore, a declarative language is introduced to specify the collaboration among BPs with data and multiple instances concerned. The language adopts a subset of linear temporal logics (LTL) as constraints to restrict the behavior of the collaborative BPs.As a follow-up study, we focus on the satisfiability problem of the declarative BP collaboration language, i.e., whether a given specification as a set of constraints allows at least one finite execution. Naturally, if a specification excludes every possible execution, it should be considered as an undesirable design. Therefore, we consider different combi- nation of the constraint types and for each combination, syntactic conditions are provided to decide whether the given constraints are satisfiable. The syntactic conditions automat- ically lead to polynomial testing methods (comparing to PSPACE-complete complexity of general LTL satisfiability testing).

Business process re-engineering (part of the Business Process Management domain) is among the top three concerns of Information Technology (IT) leaders and is deemed to be one of many important IT leveraging opportunities. Two major challenges have been identified in relation to BPM and the use of IT. The first challenge is related to involving business process participants in process improvement initiatives using BPM systems. BPM technologies are considered to be primarily targeted for developers and not BPM users, and the need to engage process participants into process improvement initiatives is not addressed, contributing to the business-IT gap. The second challenge is related to potential de-skilling of knowledge workers when knowledge-intensive processes are automated and process knowledge resides in IT, rather than human process participants. The two identified challenges are not separate issues. Process participants need to be knowledgeable about the process in order to actively contribute to BPM initiatives, and the loss of process knowledge as a result of passive use of automated systems may further threaten their participation in process improvement. In response to the call for more research on the individual impacts of business process initiatives, the purpose of this dissertation study is to understand the relationship between IT configurations (particularly process support and process visualization), process characteristics and individual level process outcomes, such as task performance and process knowledge. In the development of the research model we rely on organizational knowledge creation literature and scaffolding in Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development, business process modeling and workflow automation research, as well as research on the influence of IT on individual performance. The theoretical model is tested empirically in experimental settings using a series of two studies. In both studies participants were asked to complete tasks as part of a business process using different versions of a mock-up information system. Together, the studies evaluate the effect of IT process support, process visualization and process complexity on process participant performance and process knowledge. The results of the studies show the significant influence of IT process support on individual process outcomes. The studies indicate that task performance does increase but at the cost of users’ process knowledge. Process visualization however is shown to enhance user’s process knowledge in the event of no formal process training while having no negative impact on task performance. The key contribution of this research is that it suggests a practical way to counteract potential negative effects of IT process automation by converting the use of the information system into a learning experience, where the IT itself acts as a scaffold for the acquisition of process knowledge. The results have practical implications for the design of workflow automation systems, as well as for process training.

The concept of ICT/business alignment has been extensively discussed in the literature, but almost always in the context of large firms from the manufacturing and retailing industry. In addition, prior research has predominately conceptualized and operationalized ICT/business alignment at the firm level, very few attempts have been made to explore the issue at the process level. In this study, we developed an ICT alignment profile by adopting the value discipline theory to examine this concept from the business process perspective. Adopting the Resource Based View (RBV) and Contingency theory, a conceptual model that captures the antecedents of strategic ICT/business alignment, strategic alignment, and performance outcomes is proposed and empirically tested in the context of Australian professional conference organizers (PCO); Partial Least Square (PLS) was used for the data analysis. The contribution of this study is fourfold. First, ground in both RBV and Contingency theory, an integrative research model incorporating resources factors and contingency factors was developed to empirically assess the alignment between ICT and business strategy in the context of PCOs. Second, this study moves beyond the dominated firm level alignment paradigm by conceptualizing and evaluating the concept of alignment from the business process perspective, the process approach provided in-depth insights to the relationship between alignment and firm performance. Third, this study added the small firm perspective to strategic alignment literature in respect of antecedent to the alignment and its subsequent outcomes. Last but not least, this research also contributed to MICE literature by providing valuable insights as to the technology advancement in the business event industry in Australia.

Background: The REpresentational State Transfer (REST) design principles treat all concepts in the world as link-connected resources, and support ROA (Resource-Oriented Architecture) for the Web applications. REST and ROA are responsible for the adaptability achieved in the Web. Some design approaches of Web-based business process systems recently evolved towards RESTful to inherit adaptability. However, none of the approaches can improve the adaptability of the produced systems. Aims: Propose a systematic approach for design and execution of Web-based business processes to improve adaptability of the produced systems. Methods: This research followed an empirical research methodology, which evaluates research solutions with real-world cases. On one hand, the research solution was derived by 1) tailoring the REST principles towards business process systems; 2) proposing REST annotations on existing business process modelling; 3) mapping the concepts of business process to HTTP/URI specifications; and 4) designing a format for process context information. On the other hand, the research solution was evaluated through three real-world case studies. Two of the case studies conducted comparative analysis in terms of adaptability of the systems produced by the proposed approach and two alternatives, namely, SOA and MEST (MESsage Transfer). The analysis is based on metrics, including LOC difference, change locality, coupling and cohesion, and an analysis framework called BASE. Results: The research solution is ROA4BP, which includes 1) an architecting approach for design and implementation of Web-based business processes to provide a development guideline; 2) a set of REST-related annotations on existing process modelling to ensure the compatibility with existing techniques; 3) A systematic mapping between business process and HTTP/URI specifications to utilize the advanced mechanisms provided by the Web infrastructure; and 4) a communication format to exchange structured process context information during runtime among process participants. A modelling tool, a programming API and a runtime engine were implemented to support the approach and simplify the implementation of case studies. The case studies demonstrated that ROA4BP can produce more adaptable business process systems compared to the other two alternatives. Conclusion: ROA4BP can help to design and execute RESTful business process systems with better adaptability at design-time and runtime.

Over time enterprises have woven together a fabric of processes, information structures, and computer tools to conduct their day-to-day business. Many of the components of this patchwork of systems cannot work together effectively, as the underlying models are incompatible. There is however, a strong business case to be made for ensuring that end-to- end business processes are interoperable, both across the enterprise, and with other enterprises. Qualitative research demonstrates that distinct cultures and non-overlapping knowledge between IS development (ISD) team members impedes system development success. It also identifies Boundary Spanning mechanisms as a significant mitigator. We develop these ideas further by exploring the mechanisms of knowledge sharing in project teams covering overlapping competence, and the presence of knowledge integration mechanisms - acculturation, boundary spanning roles- in how they affect ISD success. We utilize survey data derived from 139 ISD projects in a global US automotive OEM, completed between 2006 and 2009. We show that boundary spanning roles, acculturative processes, and cross-domain knowledge affect in significant ways IS development success.In particular, we demonstrate that facilitative boundary spanning roles - ambassador, coordinator, and scout - moderate the relationship between accumulated IS business domain knowledge and ISD success, and that IS business competence is partially determined by acculturation among IS team members, and the technical competence of the IS team. Teams with low levels of business domain knowledge may be able to mitigate their business knowledge deficit by engaging in boundary spanning behaviors as to enhance the flow of information across the team’s knowledge boundaries.

A business process streamlines how different business parties interact with one another, in order to achieve a business goal. The modeling and enactment of business process is notoriously complex, especially in open systems where the participants are autonomous and heterogeneous. Conceptually, a business process consists of two important elements; the business protocols that specify the interactions between the partners and the business policies that drive the partners? behavior during the enactment of protocols. Business policies are an integral and important component of business processes. Business policies are often expressed and implemented as business rules. It is common to embed these business rules within the business process implementation. When the business practices or policies change, as they often do, it is difficult to dynamically manage these changes without affecting the business process implementation. It is a challenge to correctly reflect the policy changes with minimal or no change to the implementation of the business process. The conventional workflow approaches of representing business policies, reduce the flexibility and reusability of business processes. It is possible to control the behavior of protocol participants dynamically, without changing the protocol specification by representing the private internal business policies separate from the generic, public business protocols. However, given a separate policy and protocol specification, it is important that when the participants enact the protocol, the behavior dictated by their local policies be congruent with the protocol specifications. The focus of this thesis is to develop a methodology to configure the private policies of the participant such that, its behavior during protocol enactment is always compliant with the protocol. We propose a methodology that describes how the agent policies should be added to the protocol specification such that the protocol is not violated during enactment.

Business process management faces challenges in dealing with business abnormalities and ever-changing business requirements. Traditional business process management approaches evolved from software engineering and workflow management where activities, messages and control logic are given prominence. The resulting models specify low-level details of execution and coordination. However, difficulties arise when modelling long-lived business transactions involving information updates and execution exceptions. To handle such situations, current approaches implement excessive activities without suitable abstractions, thereby arbitrarily fragmenting the business requirements. We propose a commitment-based approach for business process modelling that formulates business processes as multiagent systems. Organizational structure and its effect on interactions are described using commitments and causality. Agents act as process executors and maintain the commitments made to each other. Updates and exceptions yield commitment operations under which processes are updated and reexecuted. Our approach brings commitment semantics into business modelling and enables agent collaboration for business process enactment. We derive commitment protocols from agent conversations and generate agent execution models. We also formalize our approach using the Π-calculus and prove its correctness. To demonstrate the practical use of our approach, we formalize multiparty agreements with commitments and present algorithms on how to detect agreement conflicts and build satisfiable commitment sets.

Process-based composition of Web services is emerging as a promising technology for the effective automation of integrated and collaborative applications. As Web services are often autonomous and heterogeneous entities, coordinating their interactions to build complex processes is a difficult, error prone, and time-consuming task. In addition, since Web services usually operate in dynamic and highly evolving environments, there is a need for supporting flexible and correct execution of integrated processes. In this thesis, we propose a Petri net-based framework for formal composition and recovery policies in service-based business processes. We first propose an algebra for composing Web services. The formal semantics of this algebra is expressed in terms of Petri nets. The use of a formal model allows the effective verification and analysis of properties, both within a service, such as termination and absence of deadlock, and between services, such as behavioral equivalences. We also develop a top down approach for the correct (e.g., absence of deadlock and termination) composition of complex business processes. The approach defines a set of refinement operators that guarantee correctness of the resulting business process nets at design time. We then introduce Self-Adaptive Recovery Net (SARN), an extended Petri net model for specifying exceptional behavior in business processes. SARN adapts the structure of the underlying Petri net at run time to handle exceptions while keeping the Petri net design simple and easy. The proposed framework caters for the specification of high-level recovery policies that are incorporated either with a single task or a set of tasks, called a recovery region. Finally, we propose a pattern-based approach to dynamically restructure SARN. These patterns capture the ways past exceptions have been dealt with. The objective is to continuously restructure recovery regions within the SARN model to minimize the impact of exception handling. To illustrate the viability of the proposed composition and exception handling techniques, we have developed HiWorD (HIerarchical WORkflow Designer), a hierarchical Petri net-based business process modeling and simulation tool.

In this study, activity-based cost management (ABCM) was applied to a fire protection engineering department and a respiratory protection program. The basic proposition examined was that ABCM, which examines both cost assignment and work activities linked together as a business process, can be used to quantify costs and generate business process information about the operation of environmental, safety, and health (ES&H) departments. The resultant data can be used to improve decision making, better manage and control activity transactions that generate costs, and solve complex budgetary and business problems. As a result, better decisions can be made to improved health protection provided to workers and the public. A descriptive case study design was used to systematically collect data and observations about the application and utility of ABCM in occupational and environmental health organizations. A systematic process was used for collecting business process data through process mapping, and stakeholder and activity analyses. An ABCM model was designed and populated with cost and business process data collected during field studies. Quantitative analyses of the ABCM model were used to determine the drivers of cost in each organization; the influence of activity transactions on cost; and the cost of activities, products, and services. This study has shown that: (1) ABCM can be applied in occupational and environmental health organizations; (2) the data provided to managers from traditional managerial accounting methods do not adequately describe an organization's work activities nor identify the amount of specific resources required to make that organization functional; and (3) ABCM provided a structure that gives managers an opportunity to examine (a) work activity transactions and why they occur, (b) how decisions are made with new data, and (c) how the pieces of an organization fit together to achieve stated goals. By applying ABCM in these two case studies, insight was developed about how each organization works and why. Finally, this work has created the foundation for a subsequent study about the influence and effect that ABCM will have on improving conditions in the workplace as measured by selected occupational health and safety outcomes.