Investigating the Relationship between Process Management and Organizational Culture: Literature Review and Research Agenda

Abstract

Managing the business processes of companies is a task which has emerged as a top priority across all industries.However, business process management (BPM) is not just a set of structured methods and technologies which cansimply be assigned to employees. On the contrary, the success of any process initiative is interwoven with the cultureof the respective company. Additionally, in most cases there is not only one organizational culture but a range ofsubcultures within the organization due to previous mergers, existing subsidiaries etc. Despite its importance, theinterrelation between BPM and organizational culture has been only sparsely explored. This paper analyzes the statusquo of academic literature with regard to the interrelation between BPM and organizational culture. The resultsreveal considerable differences in the perception of the interface between both fields. Furthermore, our analysisreveals that the organizational psychological perspective has been widely neglected in process management literature.To the best of our knowledge, this is the first literature review written from both a process management and anorganizational psychological perspective. As such, it strives to contribute to a comprehensive and thoroughunderstanding of this relationship. Based on the review we develop a framework, serving as a basis for a deeperunderstanding of the interdependency and providing avenues for further research.