Researching Participatory Modeling Sessions: An Experimental Study on the Influence of Evaluation Potential and the Opportunity to Draw Oneself

This paper deals with the question of how participatory enterprise modeling sessions should be implemented such that participants feel that they own and identify themselves with the models. We present an experiment about the following conditions: (1) the participants were either asked to draw the model themselves or a tool operator took on that task, and (2) the participants were either introduced to a secretary keeping a protocol of their individual contributions or they were not. Our results indicate that neither participation nor the feeling that the model is “mine” is influenced by the conditions. However, participants who did not model themselves showed higher identification with the model. The study gives hint that we should not overestimate the value of stakeholders physically modeling themselves.