What is sustainability in business process management? A theoretical framework and its application in the public sector of Ethiopia

Abstract

Modern Business Process Management (BPM) is a comprehensive approach for improving business performance by managing end-to-end business processes. It tends to embrace both, radical redesign and continual improvement of business processes. While a plethora of methods for BPM exist, single BPM initiatives still often struggle to prove successful in practice. Hence, with this study we set out to examine the concept of BPM success. We draw from a stakeholder theory and argue that BPM initiatives need to take the perspective of multiple stakeholders (e. g. managers, shareholders, employees) into account in order to prove successful. We evaluate our model within the case of a large scale BPM project in the Ethiopian public sector. Ethiopia is one of the countries that have recognized the need for change in the public sector and have tried to adopt BPM models as a viable radical change instrument. The implementation did show improvement, yet, it remains doubtful how far the initiative can be successfully evaluated. First we present results from applying our BPM sustainability framework and subsequently outline opportunities for future research. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.