Plausible pictures for data governance: A narrative network approach

Workaround-centric data activities (WCDA) can impact data integrity/quality. Despite this, one can view WCDA as an enhancement to organisational Data Governance (DG) maturity. However, these WCDA are primarily undocumented and poorly understood. Therefore, we need a means of creating plausible pictures for DG – by modelling WCDA visually. This study draws on the theory of organisational routines to develop WCDA modelling rules. It is the first study to leverage the Narrative Network (NN) approach as a conceptual lens to model WCDA visually. We identify five WCDA modelling rules: 1) a narrative fragment must come from a process actor, 2) a narrative fragment has three attributes: actor, action & resource, 3) all attributes in a narrative fragment establish the action type, 4) a narrative fragment must contain a data activity, and 5) a narrative fragment data activity must follow a standard naming convention. In conclusion, we discuss the advantages of our approach.