Jan vom Brocke

The Six Core Elements of Business Process Management

The previous chapters gave an insightful introduction into the various facets of Business Process Management. We now share a rich understanding of the essential ideas behind designing and managing processes for organizational purposes. We have also learned about the various streams of research and development that have influenced contemporary BPM. As a matter of fact, BPM has become a holistic management discipline. As such, it requires that a plethora of facets needs to be addressed for its successful und sustainable application. This chapter provides a framework that consolidates and structures the essential factors that constitute BPM as a whole. Drawing from research in the field of maturity models, we suggest six core elements of BPM: strategic alignment, governance, methods, information technology, people, and culture. These six elements serve as the structure for this BPM Handbook.

Sensemaking and sustainable practicing: functional affordances of information systems in green transformations

This paper explores how a world-wide operating software solutions provider implemented environmentally sustainable business practices in response to emerging environmental concerns. Through an interpretive case study, we develop a theoretical framework that identifies four important functional affordances originating in information systems, which are required in environmental sustainability transformations as they create an actionable context in which (1) organizations can engage in a sensemaking process related to understanding emerging environmental requirements, and (2) individuals can implement environmentally sustainable work practices. Through our work, we provide several contributions, including a better understanding of IS-enabled organizational change and the types of functional affordances of information systems that are required in sustainability transformations. We describe implications relating to (1) how information systems can contribute to the creation of environmentally sustainable organizations, (2) the design of information systems to create required functional affordances, (3) the management of sustainability transformations, and (4) the further development of the concept of functional affordances in IS research.

Culture in business process management: a literature review

Purpose – Business process management (BPM) is a management approach that developed with a strong focus on the adoption of information technology (IT). However, there is a growing awareness that BPM requires a holistic organizational perspective especially since culture is often considered a key element in BPM practice. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of existing research on culture in BPM.Design/methodology/approach – This literature review builds on major sources of the BPM community including the BPM Journal, the BPM Conference and central journal/conference databases. Forward and backward searches additionally deepen the analysis. Based on the results, a model of cultures role in BPM is developed.Findings – The results of the literature review provide evidence that culture is still a widely under‐researched topic in BPM. Furthermore, a framework on cultures role in BPM is developed and areas for future research are revealed.Research limitations/implications – The analy...

Which cultural values matter to business process management?: Results from a global Delphi study

Purpose – Business process management (BPM) requires a holistic perspective that includes managing the culture of an organization to achieve objectives of efficient and effective business processes. Still, the specifics of a BPM‐supportive organizational culture have not been examined so far. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to identify the characteristics of a cultural setting supportive of BPM objectives.Design/methodology/approach – The paper examines the constituent values of a BPM‐supportive cultural setting through a global Delphi study with BPM experts from academia and practice and explore these values in a cultural value framework.Findings – The paper empirically identifies and defines four key cultural values supporting BPM, viz., customer orientation, excellence, responsibility, and teamwork. The paper discusses the relationships between these values and identifies a particular challenge in managing these seemingly competing values.Research limitations/implications – The identification and de...

Towards a business process-oriented approach to enterprise content management: the ECM-blueprinting framework

In today’s digital information age, companies are struggling with an immense overload of mainly unstructured data. Reducing search times, fulfilling compliance requirements and maintaining information quality represent only three of the challenges that organisations from all industry sectors are faced with. Enterprise content management (ECM) has emerged as a promising approach addressing these challenges. Yet, there are still numerous obstacles to the implementation of ECM technologies, particularly fostered by the fact that the key challenges of ECM adaptation processes are rather organisational than technological. In the present article we claim that the consideration of an organisation’s business process structure is particularly crucial for ECM success. In response to this, we introduce a process-oriented conceptual framework that systematises the key steps of an ECM adoption. The paper suggests that ECM and business process management are two strongly related fields of research.

Ten principles of good business process management

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to foster a common understanding of business process management (BPM) by proposing a set of ten principles that characterize BPM as a research domain and guide its successful use in organizational practice. Design/methodology/approach – The identification and discussion of the principles reflects the viewpoint, which was informed by extant literature and focus groups, including 20 BPM experts from academia and practice. Findings – The authors identify ten principles which represent a set of capabilities essential for mastering contemporary and future challenges in BPM. Their antonyms signify potential roadblocks and bad practices in BPM. The authors also identify a set of open research questions that can guide future BPM research. Research limitations/implications – The findings suggest several areas of research regarding each of the identified principles of good BPM. Also, the principles themselves should be systematically and empirically examined in future studies....

Value‐oriented process modeling: integrating financial perspectives into business process re‐design

Purpose – Financial information about costs and return on investments are of key importance to strategic decision making but also in the context of process improvement or business engineering. The purpose of this paper is to propose a value‐oriented approach to business process modeling based on key concepts and metrics from operations and financial management, to aid decision making in process re‐design projects on the basis of process models.Design/methodology/approach – The paper suggests a theoretically founded extension to current process modeling approaches, and delineates a framework as well as methodical support to incorporate financial information into process re‐design. The paper uses two case studies to evaluate the suggested approach.Findings – Based on two case studies, the paper shows that the value‐oriented process modeling approach facilitates and improves managerial decision making in the context of process re‐design.Research limitations/implications – The paper presents design work and t...

Development and validation of an instrument to measure organizational cultures' support of Business Process Management

The purpose of Business Process Management (BPM) is to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of organizational processes through improvement and innovation. Despite a common understanding that culture is an important element in these efforts, there is a dearth of theoretical and empirical research on culture as a facilitator of successful BPM. We develop the BPM culture construct and propose a validated instrument with which to measure organizational cultures’ support of BPM. The operationalization of the BPM culture concept provides a theoretical foundation for future research and a tool to assist organizations in developing a cultural environment that supports successful BPM.

Evaluations in the science of the artificial --- reconsidering the build-evaluate pattern in design science research

The central outcome of design science research (DSR) is prescriptive knowledge in the form of IT artifacts and recommendations. However, prescriptive knowledge is considered to have no truth value in itself. Given this assumption, the validity of DSR outcomes can only be assessed by means of descriptive knowledge to be obtained at the conclusion of a DSR process. This is reflected in the build-evaluate pattern of current DSR methodologies. Recognizing the emergent nature of IT artifacts this build-evaluate pattern, however, poses unfavorable implications regarding the achievement of rigor within a DSR project. While it is vital in DSR to prove the usefulness of an artifact a rigorous DSR process also requires justifying and validating the artifact design itself even before it has been put into use. This paper proposes three principles for evaluating DSR artifacts which not only address the evaluation of an artifacts usefulness but also the evaluation of design decisions made to build an artifact. In particular, it is argued that by following these principles the prescriptive knowledge produced in DSR can be considered to have a truth-like value.

Green IT: A Matter of Business and Information Systems Engineering?

This panel discusses the impact of Green IT on information systems and how information systems can meet environmental challenges and ensure sustainability. We wish to highlight the role of green business processes, and specifically the contributions that the management of these processes can play in leveraging the transformative power of IS in order to create an environmentally sustainable society. The management of business processes has typically been thought of in terms of business improvement alongside the dimensions time, cost, quality, or flexibility – the so-called ‘devil’s quadrangle’. Contemporary organizations, however, increasingly become aware of the need to create more sustainable, IT-enabled business processes that are also successful in terms of their economic, ecological, as well as social impact. Exemplary ecological key performance indicators that increasingly find their way into the agenda of managers include carbon emissions, data center energy, or renewable energy consumption (SAP 2010). The key challenge, therefore, is to extend the devil’s quadrangle to a devil’s pentagon, including sustainability as an important fifth dimension in process change.