Emergent risks in business process change projects
Abstract
Purpose
Even today still many business process change (BPC) initiatives fail and cause high overruns for organizations undergoing BPC initiatives. It is therefore important that BPC practitioners and researchers understand the risks inherent in BPC projects, and that they adapt their risk management processes to account for and mitigate these risks. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to investigate which emergent risks matter in BPC project.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors adopted case survey methodology and investigated data from 130 case studies to show the nature and magnitude of relationships between organizational support risks, volatility risks, and BPC project and process performance.
Findings
The results show that organizational support risks influence both the overall BPC project performance and process performance. Whereas, volatility risks influence project performance but appear to have no direct impact on the process performance. Both organizational support risks and volatility risks show influence on project management practices.
Research limitations/implications
The study show several limitations that might be assigned to the case survey methodology, such as use of secondary data or publication bias.
Practical implications
The authors provide considerable support which emergent risks matter in BPC projects.
Originality/value
The contribution of this study takes several forms. It fills a gap in the literature concerning emergent risk factors inherent in BPC projects. The authors provided theoretical explanation of the effects of emergent risks on BPC project and process performance. And lastly, the authors have demonstrated the usefulness of case survey methodology in BPC research.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors thank SAP AG for funding this project as part of the collaborative research center “CVLBA – Center for Very Large Business Applications.”
Citation
Jurisch, M.C., Rosenberg, Z. and Krcmar, H. (2016), "Emergent risks in business process change projects", Business Process Management Journal, Vol. 22 No. 4, pp. 791-811. https://doi.org/10.1108/BPMJ-01-2015-0002
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2016, Emerald Group Publishing Limited