Collaborative business process management: status quo and quo vadis

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the status quo with regards to business process management (BPM) and collaboration and to show potential fields of future research in the area of collaborative BPM.

Design/methodology/approach

To obtain results, authors employ the method of a systematic literature review using relevant existing guidelines. They not only search leading journals and conferences in the fields but also in ISI web of knowledge's web of science. Subsuming, 39 relevant articles are selected and analyzed with regards to concepts identified upfront.

Findings

The paper finds that collaborative BPM is a growing trend in information systems research, but that there still exist significant research gaps. Hence, it proposes a research agenda consisting out of five action fields pointing at potentially fruitful directions for future research.

Research limitations/implications

First, this paper provides an overview of the status quo in the field of collaborative BPM to young scholars. Second, it identifies five distinct research gaps that could be worth studying. However, this paper may be limited by the choice of dimensions and the selection of relevant articles.

Practical implications

This paper informs practitioners about the status quo of research on collaborative BPM. Here, especially the analysis in the dimensions collaboration partner and BPM goals can help to evaluate the practitioner's strategy.

Originality/value

The results of this paper present the status quo of collaborative BPM literature. Hence, it also identifies research gaps and derives a research agenda.

Citation

Niehaves, B. and Plattfaut, R. (2011), "Collaborative business process management: status quo and quo vadis", Business Process Management Journal, Vol. 17 No. 3, pp. 384-402. https://doi.org/10.1108/14637151111136342