Table 6.

Motivational and methodological orientations towards workflow

Category	Motivational and/or methodological orientation
Cognition and information processing	Information needs and cognitive processes of workers are essential elements in workflow analysis
Communication and collaboration	Workers accomplish work activities through interaction with others
Construction of meaning	People accomplish work through the creation of shared meaning
Design	Analysis of work produces insights useful for technology and work system design
Ergonomics	Contextual factors (eg, environment, task demands) impact workers on physical and mental levels
Idealized process for simulation	Developers study workflow to create idealized models of work for use in computer simulations
Interruptions	Studying the nature and impact of interruptions produces insights about workflow
Invisible work	Analysis of non-categorizable and contingent work adds to the overall understanding of workflow
Management and business process redesign	Management controls workflow, which links directly to organizational objectives
Safety and resilience	Analysis focuses on controlling elements of work impacting process safety and resilience
Systems view	Analysis of workflow covers multiple levels (eg, individual, group, environment, and technology)
Tasks and processes in the abstract	Descriptions of routine and marked tasks produce generalizable process information
Taxonomy	Elements of workflow require further definition
Temporality	Dimension of time impacts tasks, the relationships among routine tasks, and interactions among workers
Time study	Analysis of how much time specific tasks consume contributes to understanding workflow
Use of artifacts	Actors' use of technology, documents and other items provides insight into understanding overall workflow and informs the design of specific technologies
Work activities in context	Examining routine and non-routine work in the real-world context reveals the complex nature of work
Work sampling	Data on actual work activities collected at set intervals serves as an empirical basis for work analysis