AbstractThis article focuses on design of processes in which role‐playing human agents perform intellectual tasks on an industrial scale, such that processes are repeatable and result in outcomes of acceptable quality. This exploration of requirements of design of such processes revolves around a semantic theme: What do processes mean? What are their intents and purposes? How does such understanding help us in asserting these intents and purposes when processes are executed? The core contribution in this article is a responsibility framework for individual and collective intellectual action that underlies process semantics. A process results in outcomes, its product. This product must be acceptable to its recipients, its users. This was the basis for the quality revolution in discrete manufacturing industries where quality is standardized through use of capital intensive tools, and variation in performance of the process is contained through training of industrial workers. We address the concerns of design of processes for the service industries, in which role‐playing human agents perform intellectual tasks on an industrial scale. In this context, the meaning of a process is defined as being responsible for the acceptability of qualities of its product produced through intellectual work. The design of processes is then predicated on a system for asserting its semantics, that of asserting acceptable product qualities. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.