Design science research for business process design: Organizational transition at intersport Sweden

Abstract

Business processes need to be aligned with business strategies. This paper elaborates on experiences from a business process design effort in an action research project performed at Intersport Sweden. The purpose with this project was to create a solid base for taking the retail chain Intersport into a new organizational state where the new process design is aligned with strategic goals. Although business process modeling is concerned with creating artifacts, traditionally information systems design science research has had little impact on research on business process models. In this paper, we address the question of how design science research can contribute to business process design. Three heuristic guidelines for creating organizational commitment and strategic alignment in process design are presented. The guidelines are derived from the successful actions taken in the research project. The development of these guidelines is used as a basis to reflect upon the contribution of design science research to business process design. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2010.