Participatory modeling from a stakeholder perspective: On the influence of collaboration and revisions on psychological ownership and perceived model quality

Participatory enterprise modeling is about gathering domain experts and involving them directly in the creation of models, aided by modeling experts. It is meant to increase commitment to and quality of models. This paper presents an exploratory study focusing on the subjective view of the domain experts. We investigated the influence of direct collaboration versus individual modeling, and the influence of model revisions by modeling experts on psychological ownership and perceived model quality. We chose process modeling as a particular form of enterprise modeling. Our results give hint that domain experts working individually with a modeling expert perceive model quality as higher than those working collaboratively whereas psychological ownership did not show any difference. Revisions caused changes in the subjects’ assessments only of model quality. Moreover, we will present qualitative results from interviews we led with the participants. They reveal interesting insight on how outcome and perception of the procedure and the method in both settings can be positively influenced. The interviews also emphasize the special role of the method experts who are sometimes even considered as co-owners of the model.