Mayara Segatto, Silvia Inês Dallavalle de Pádua and Dante Pinheiro Martinelli
The purpose of this paper is to assess whether the business process management (BPM) approach contributes to applying systemic characteristics in organisations.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to assess whether the business process management (BPM) approach contributes to applying systemic characteristics in organisations.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a theoretical and descriptive work based on a review of the literature on BPM and systemic approach.
Findings
From the analysis of its stages, it was possible to find a strong correspondence between BPM and the systemic characteristics found in the literature.
Practical implications
The paper presents practical implications to professionals as well as academics. The contribution to the body of knowledge on BPM derives from the identification of systemic characteristics in it, thus justifying its practical application to organisations in order to ensure better systemicity and adaptability. As processes are directed to the same goal, unnecessary and misdirected steps are redesigned or eliminated, concentrating resources on core processes and improving the organisation's performance. The paper also contributes to education, since the systemic approach may be a key subject to clarify the inter‐relationships among processes, and processes and their contexts.
Originality/value
The originality resides on elucidating the systemic characteristics of BPM, being academically valuable for justifying the studies about such an approach, besides contributing to the characterisation of its basic assumptions as well. In addition, the value of the present work for business management resides in the identification of a practical approach which can be applied to organisations in order to ensure them systemicity and flexibility.
Details
Keywords
Silvia Inês Dallavalle de Pádua, Janaina Mascarenhas Hornos da Costa, Mayara Segatto, Melchior Aparecido de Souza Júnior and Charbel José Chiappetta Jabbour
This paper focuses on organizational change through the business process management approach. While “business process modeling” permits understanding process activities and their…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper focuses on organizational change through the business process management approach. While “business process modeling” permits understanding process activities and their activities with other participants, “current reality tree (CRT)” technique promotes the identification of process constraints. The purpose of this study is to compare the results from applying both diagnostic techniques, process modeling, using the business process modeling notation, and root cause analysis, using the CRT.
Design/methodology/approach
The comparison is made using a pre-experiment in which two teams conducted diagnoses concomitantly in the information technology management (ITM) process of one unit of the biggest and prestigious higher education institution (HEI) in Brazil.
Findings
The modeling technique and the CRT should be considered complementary techniques, since applying one does not diminish or exclude the importance of using the other. Results were compared analyzing which dimensions of the process each technique highlighted: strategy, organization, activity/information and resources.
Research limitations/implications
A possible limitation of this research is that the experiment was conducted in a single process and the result cannot be generalized to other processes.
Practical implications
It may be noted that the main contribution of this study is the presentation of the steps of two techniques for process diagnosis. It is expected that with the reports on diagnoses outcomes, team's assessment and the perception of the managers presented here other improvement teams may use the results of this research as an inspiration to perform process diagnosis, and as basis for decision making to define which technique to use according to the specific needs of process improvement.
Originality/value
The paper stands out the comparison of the technique application's outcomes. This study offers valuable insights to the organizations that are interested in restructuring their processes. It delineates many important benefits of such a diagnosis techniques. It also identifies possible pitfalls and recommends guidelines for the successful conduction of process diagnoses initiatives.