A study into the contingencies of process improvement methods

Monika Malinova,Steven Gross,Jan Mendling

doi:10.1016/j.is.2021.101880

Abstract

The design and improvement of business processes is of central importance for realizing benefits of information systems. A broad spectrum of methods has been proposed since the 1990s, which ranges into several dozen. It is unclear whether this large number trivially stems from copying and relabeling or whether there are substantial differences in these methods that can be tied to their applicability in different contexts or to the pursuit of different goals. Accordingly, we ask: Which activities do process improvement methods have in common, how do they differ, and why? In this paper, we approach these research questions using a multi-method design integrating techniques from systematic literature review, process mining, and statistical analysis. Our contributions are as follows. First, we provide a framework with 264 activities clustered in six stages that could be used for incrementally and radically improving processes. Second, we find that methods map to different configurations of the three dimensions described by the redesign orbit. Third, we uncover similarities and differences of the different methods contingent to the factors industry, objectives and whether a method is proposed or applied. Fourth, we observe three distinct clusters of method activities, which show that different strategies play a role when choosing a method for improvement. Our findings have important implications for the application of improvement methods in various improvement scenarios.

Highlights

IntroductionBusiness processes (or processes for short) are known to be of central importance for reaping the benefits of new information systems (IS)
Business processes are known to be of central importance for reaping the benefits of new information systems (IS)
We find that 60% of all redesign methods offer at least one activity from the Envision stage, while each redesign method includes on average 1.9 activities from the same stage

Summary

Introduction

Business processes (or processes for short) are known to be of central importance for reaping the benefits of new information systems (IS). These methods exploit specific knowledge about the domain, and this domain being the environment where process improvement has been applied This argument would imply that the understood specifics of a diverse spectrum of process improvement environments had led to the definition of various strong improvement methods that are subject to contingencies: instead of a ‘‘one best way for all’’, these methods would incorporate a ‘‘one best way for each’’ principle [9]. This contingency argument is present in the BPM literature [10,11], largely restricted to the description of factors that influence process performance. Organizations that aim to improve their processes typically rely on established methods for discovering, analyzing, and improving their processes

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Discussion

Conclusion