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The purpose of this paper is to foster a common understanding of business process management (BPM) by proposing a set of ten principles that characterize BPM as a research domain and guide its successful use in organizational practice.

The identification and discussion of the principles reflects the viewpoint, which was informed by extant literature and focus groups, including 20 BPM experts from academia and practice.

The authors identify ten principles which represent a set of capabilities essential for mastering contemporary and future challenges in BPM. Their antonyms signify potential roadblocks and bad practices in BPM. The authors also identify a set of open research questions that can guide future BPM research.

The findings suggest several areas of research regarding each of the identified principles of good BPM. Also, the principles themselves should be systematically and empirically examined in future studies.

The findings allow practitioners to comprehensively scope their BPM initiatives and provide a general guidance for BPM implementation. Moreover, the principles may also serve to tackle contemporary issues in other management areas.

This is the first paper that distills principles of BPM in the sense of both good and bad practice recommendations. The value of the principles lies in providing normative advice to practitioners as well as in identifying open research areas for academia, thereby extending the reach and richness of BPM beyond its traditional frontiers.

The purpose of this paper is to argue that in order to achieve customer centricity through business process management (BPM), companies have to obtain the profound understanding of customers’ processes and when necessary change not only the interactions with but also the processes of their customers. A method is presented that allows doing this in a systematic manner.

A case study of a large multinational company was conducted. Several different sources and methods were used, including document analysis, interviews and a qualitative analysis of responses to open-ended questions. Data were gathered at three points in time: before, during and after the implementation of the presented approach.

The method that was successfully employed by the case organisation consisted of combining BPM with service blueprinting, and of extending these efforts by integrating the customers’ internal processes into the scope of improvement.

The paper does not thoroughly evaluate the long-term effects of the proposed approach. Some results of the case study analysis had to be excluded from this paper due to reasons of confidentiality.

The paper presents an approach for organisations to not only understand the needs of their customers but also the way in which their product is used in customers’ processes. In this way BPM can be implemented in a truly customer-oriented way.

This paper extends previous work by presenting one way in which BPM can follow up on its promise of increasing an organisations customer orientation. While servitisation has received a lot of attention in various disciplines, its application within BPM research and practice has been scarce.

The purpose of this paper is to support the application of a combined BPM (business process management)/SOA (service‐oriented architecture) approach and contribute to the body of knowledge on the business value of SOA.

This case study highlights the promising results of a process reengineering project at Belgacom Mobile, Belgium's largest mobile telecommunications operator. The reengineering effort centered around a key automation pillar involving in particular the optimization of the SIM card ordering process. SOA principles were applied to ensure both the flexibility of the redesigned process and its capability of dealing with newly emerging SIM card types. This case demonstrates the potential benefits of combining BPM and SOA concepts to establish IT‐enabled process innovation.

In terms of performance improvement, the studied project resulted in: increased process flexibility and consistency, considerably shorter lead times, and enhanced process control.

The findings from this case study present useful insights for other companies trying to reap the benefits of combined BPM and SOA. However, the single case study approach presents some limitations to the generalizability of the proposed learning points and concepts. Some case specific features such as the sector or company size might influence the generalizability. Nevertheless, the paper rather intends to trigger conceptual thinking about IT‐enabled process innovation and an architectural approach.

The added value of this project, which contributes to the general understanding of SOA potential for BPM, lies in its innovative approach, whereby product and process are separated by means of production process ID creation. The redesign approach thus provides a sustainable answer to the ever shortening life cycle of products and technologies. In particular process practitioners will find value in reading the learning points from this paper.

Managing business processes means establishing and maintaining their regulatory power, i.e., their capacity to guide and shape the practice of users and stakeholders. The purpose of this paper is to examine how the regulatory power of standardized business processes can be established and managed.

Building on a theory of standardization and on qualitative data, the authors suggest a “model of self-reinforcing business process management.”

Business process management consists of several phases (process design, process implementation, process application and process follow-up). A cyclical perspective on how these phases work together to create process legitimacy as presented in the model of self-reinforcing business process management can foster better understanding of the self-reinforcing dynamics of business process management.

The paper offers starting points for interdisciplinary research on business process management. The proposed model should be further examined with regard to its usefulness for overcoming tensions and dynamics associated with standardization.

The model of self-reinforcing business process management provides a guideline for managers involved in planning, implementing, applying, or improving business processes or further areas of change-related organizational governance.

By modeling a cyclical sequence of business process management and highlighting the role of different kinds of legitimacy, the authors integrate functionalist and social perspectives on business process management in one model.

While the business process management (BPM) literature highlights the significance of aligning employee appraisals and rewards practices with business processes, little is known about the realization. The purpose of this paper is to concretize the impact of process-oriented appraisals and rewards on business process performance and to provide empirical evidence on how organizations actually align their appraisals and rewards practices with BPM.

A mixed-method approach has been employed by combining survey results with case studies to offer first-hand evidence. Survey data have been used to quantify the real impact of process-oriented appraisals and rewards. Next, case studies with 10 organizations have allowed us to gain deeper insight into organizational practices for making appraisals and rewards more process-oriented.

The survey proves that process-oriented employee appraisals and rewards positively affect performance if different employee levels are involved. The case studies reveal similarities and differences in alignment efforts across organizations, based on pattern-matching and a multidimensional analysis, resulting in four alignment patterns.

The findings extend knowledge about appraisals and rewards within a business process context by providing a quantification and pattern refinement, which specifically advance a BPM-facilitating culture.

Managers and executives benefit from the recommendations for a gradual BPM adoption to improve the success of their business processes and their people-related practices.

The authors offer one of the first in-depth, cross-disciplinary studies that intend to bridge between the disciplines of BPM and human resource management (HRM).