Building a complementary agenda for business process management and digital innovation

Digital threads in turbulent times: unraveling technostress and cleaner production in the food industry

Introduction: In the current landscape marked by swift digital transformations and global disruptions, comprehending the intersection of digitalization and sustainable business practices is imperative. This study focuses on the food industries of China and Pakistan, aiming to explore the influence of digitalization on cleaner production. Methods: Employing a cross-sectional design, data were gathered through online surveys involving a diverse group of employees. Special attention was given to the emergent phenomenon of technostress and its subsequent implications for individuals in the workplace. Results: The findings of the study demonstrate a significant impact of digitalization on both resource mobilization and interaction quality within the surveyed food industries. Notably, technostress emerged as a mediating factor, shedding light on the psychological challenges associated with digital transitions. The study further reveals the moderating role of the COVID-19 pandemic, altering the dynamics among the variables under investigation. Discussion: From a theoretical perspective, this research contributes to the cleaner production literature by bridging it with the human-centric nuances of technological adaptation. On a practical level, the study emphasizes the importance of aligning digital strategies with resource mobilization to achieve sustainable outcomes. For the food industry and potentially beyond, the research offers a roadmap for integrating digital tools into operations, ensuring efficiency, and promoting cleaner production.

Keeping pace with the digital age: Envisioning information systems research as a platform

In this paper, we respond to Grover and Lyytinen (2022). We agree with them that the advent of the digital age is calling for a reconsideration of the role of theory and theorizing. We also think their proposal does not go far enough. The time is ripe to question the role of theory in our field more fundamentally. We propose to instead focus on establishing IS research as a platform through which we can collect, organize, and provide access to digital trace data from various sources to analyze contemporary socio-technical phenomena. We believe that such a move allows us to more fully unleash the unique socio-technical competences of our field in the digital age.

On the Importance of Project Management Capabilities for Sustainable Business Process Management

In a recently published study on business process management (BPM) capabilities in the view of digitalization, project management was not named as a core capability by the corresponding Delphi panel. However, earlier (pre-digitalization) research suggests that project management is a key success factor for BPM. This contradiction could have severe impact with regard to the sustainability of process management. This article uses qualitative case study data to discuss potential reasons for this contradiction and to answer the question of how important project management is for contemporary BPM. As both traditional and agile project management knowledge was employed in the case study, results indicate that project management is indeed helpful for BPM, especially for discrete process change. Practitioners should consider project management knowledge when staffing business process optimization and digitalization initiatives. Research should develop a deeper understanding of agile and traditional project management as antecedents to sustainable BPM success and as BPM capabilities.

Exogenous Shocks and Business Process Management

Business process management (BPM) drives corporate success through effective and efficient processes. In recent decades, knowledge has been accumulated regarding the identification, discovery, analysis, design, implementation, and monitoring of business processes. This includes methods and tools for tackling various kinds of process change such as continuous process improvement, process reengineering, process innovation, and process drift. However, exogenous shocks, which lead to unintentional and radical process change, have been neglected in BPM research although they severely affect an organization’s context, strategy, and business processes. This research note conceptualizes the interplay of exogenous shocks and BPM in terms of the effects that such shocks can have on organizations’ overall process performance over time. On this foundation, related challenges and opportunities for BPM via several rounds of idea generation and consolidation within a diverse team of BPM scholars are identified. The paper discusses findings in light of extant literature from BPM and related disciplines, as well as present avenues for future (BPM) research to invigorate the academic discourse on the topic.

Managing digital knowledge for ensuring business efficiency and continuity

Purpose

Today many firms are pushed towards digitalization to ensure business continuity and their survival due to COVID-19. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the emerging knowledge management models in the era of digitalization and disruption.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors have adopted a semi-structured approach composed of qualitative data collection from 37 business executives from India representing different industry sectors. The authors adopted a three-layer coding process (axial, open and selective) to develop a framework grounded in organizational information processing theory.

Findings

Scanning the business environment leads to understand the status of current and potential business through intelligence of information, whereas better planning and execution can be achieved through employing and using the information intelligently that fits to the overall and strategic objective of the business. Overall, the business continuity can be obtained by information prosperity across the business by engaging diverse stakeholders. According to the findings, these aspects lead to the effective implementation of digital knowledge to ensure business continuity in uncertain business environment.

Practical implications

The study offers the insights for managing and executing the knowledge in digital platforms, where they can think of developing a system architecture on the basis of degree of uncertainty and information processing requirements for combining the knowledge.

Originality/value

The present study is unique, where it offers the meaningful visions to the designers and users of virtual knowledge management systems.

Pathways to Developing Digital Capabilities within Entrepreneurial Initiatives in Pre-Digital Organizations

To enable new digital business models, pre-digital organizations launch entrepreneurial initiatives. However, in developing the required digital capabilities, pre-digital organizations often face challenges as they are marked by the ways they have historically established their organizational identity. Research on how pre-digital organizations can develop digital capabilities remains scarce. This study draws on a single case study to illustrate potential pathways for the development of digital capabilities. Two key characteristics are identified: the source of digital capability development and the set-up of the actors involved. The authors synthesize four possible pathway manifestations, discuss the dynamic nature of pathway combinations, and suggest that managing a portfolio of pathways may be crucial for pre-digital organizations. Therefore, the study contributes to a better understanding of digital transformation in pre-digital organizations. Furthermore, it provides guidance for practitioners to reflect on when deciding which pathways to follow.

Effective Decision Support in the Big Data Era

This study conducts a review and synthesis of the Business Intelligence and Analytics (BI&A) evolution, applications, frameworks and emerging trends with the aim to provide a summary of core concepts, a succinct but valuable description of main applications and frameworks, and an account of main recommendations for addressing the Big Data challenges and opportunities. It develops an integrated and organized view on the BI&A evolution process and presents an integrated BI&A application framework to help organizations adopt or develop the appropriate BI&A solutions to derive the desired impact in the Big Data era. This paper also elicits a set of practical recommendations to executives and leaders in organizations worldwide for interpreting the BI&A literature and applying the rich body of knowledge for IT practitioners. It traces the BI&A evolution to data-driven discovery and highly proactive and creative decision-making utilizing advanced analytical techniques with unstructured and massive data sources to cope with a highly dynamic global business environment in the Big Data era.

No Longer Out of Sight, No Longer Out of Mind? How Organizations Engage with Process Mining-Induced Transparency to Achieve Increased Process Awareness

In recent years, process mining has emerged as the leading big data technology for business process analysis. By extracting knowledge from event logs in information systems, process mining provides unprecedented transparency of business processes while being independent of the source system. However, despite its practical relevance, there is still a limited understanding of how organizations act upon the pervasive transparency created by process mining and how they leverage it to benefit from increased process awareness. Addressing this gap, this study conducts a multiple case study to explore how four organizations achieved increased process awareness by using process mining. Drawing on data from 24 semi-structured interviews and archival sources, this study reveals seven sociotechnical mechanisms based on process mining that enable organizations to create either standardized or shared awareness of sub-processes, end-to-end processes, and the firm’s process landscape. Thereby, this study contributes to research on business process management by revealing how process mining facilitates mechanisms that serve as a new, data-driven way of creating process awareness. In addition, the findings indicate that these mechanisms are influenced by the governance approach chosen to conduct process mining, i.e., a top-down or bottom-up driven implementation approach. Last, this study also points to the importance of balancing the social complications of increased process transparency and awareness. These results serve as a valuable starting point for practitioners to reflect on measures to increase organizational process awareness through process mining.

Business Process Management Culture in Public Administration and Its Determinants

Public administration institutions increasingly use business process management (BPM) to innovate internal operations, increase process performance and improve their services. Research on private sector companies has shown that organizational culture may impact an organization's BPM and this culture is often referred to as BPM culture. However, similar research on public administration is yet missing. Thus, this article assesses BPM culture in Germany’s municipal administration. 733 online survey responses were gathered and analyzed using MANOVA and follow-up discriminant analyses to identify possible determinants of public administration’s BPM culture. The results indicate that the employees’ professional experience and their responsibility influence the assessment of BPM culture, as does the size of a municipality. Based on these findings, the article proposes testable relationships and an agenda for further research on BPM culture in public administration.

The Five Diamond Method for Explorative Business Process Management

Explorative business process management (BPM) is attracting increasing interest in the literature and professional practice. Organizations have recognized that a focus on operational efficiency is no longer sufficient when disruptive forces can make the value proposition of entire processes obsolete. So far, however, research on how to create entirely new processes has remained largely conceptual, leaving it open how explorative BPM can be put into practice. Following the design science research paradigm and situational method engineering, we address this research gap by proposing a method called the Five Diamond Method. This method guides explorative BPM activities by supporting organizations in identifying opportunities from business and technology trends and integrating them into business processes with novel value propositions. The method is evaluated against literature-backed design objectives and competing artifacts, qualitative data gathered from BPM practitioners, as well as a pilot study and two real-world applications. This research provides two contributions. First, the Five Diamond Method broadens the scope of BPM by integrating prescriptive knowledge from innovation management. Second, the method supports capturing emerging opportunities arising from changing customer needs and digital technologies.

Business Process Management and Digital Innovations: A Systematic Literature Review

Emerging technologies have capabilities to reshape business process management (BPM) from its traditional version to a more explorative variant. However, to exploit the full benefits of new IT, it is essential to reveal BPM’s research potential and to detect recent trends in practice. Therefore, this work presents a systematic literature review (SLR) with 231 recent academic articles (from 2014 until May 2019) that integrate BPM with digital innovations (DI). We position those articles against seven future BPM-DI trends that were inductively derived from an expert panel. By complementing the expected trends in practice with a state-of-the-art literature review, we are able to derive covered and uncovered themes in order to help bridge a rigor-relevance gap. The major technological impacts within the BPM field seem to focus on value creation, customer engagement and managing human-centric and knowledge-intensive business processes. Finally, our findings are categorized into specific calls for research and for action to let scholars and organizations better prepare for future digital needs.