When processes alienate customers: Towards a theory of process acceptance

Abstract

Business processes and BPM can deliver great value to process clients. This is, however, only possible if the process is triggered in the first place. The option not to trigger a business process depends on the acceptance of the process by the involved subjects. In the present paper "Grounded Theory" is used to construct a theory of process acceptance from empirical data using qualitative content analysis. The analysis reveals that missing process acceptance can have a substantial economic impact. This indicates that business processes posses inherent social properties which should be measured and managed by process designers. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014.