Job construals – Conceptualizing and measuring process participants’ perception of process embeddedness

Abstract

Business Process Standardization (BPS) is an important instrument to enhance an organizations’ competitiveness. A crucial element to achieve BPS is the change-supportive attitude by the affected employees. Previous studies have drawn attention on various determinants of attitude such as the employee’s motivation and culture but also on the broader process and work environment and on an employee’s perception of the embeddedness of their tasks. In this paper, we draw on the latter and on the theoretical concepts of self-construal and task interdependence to develop a theoretical concept named ‘job construals’. To measure the construct, we develop a valid measurement scale. Therefore, we use a card sorting approach with BPM experts to assess the validity of the measure. The contribution of our work lies in understanding the drivers of BPS acceptance and consequently the successful implementation of process standardization initiatives.