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Business process management has received much attention in the industrial engineering and management literature, and its benefits are well known. Much less has been written in the public sector management literature, and what has been written has been very general. Hence, there is confusion among public managers about how business process management concepts should be implemented. How should public organizations reorganize to accommodate business process management? How are existing or new enterprise systems aligned with business process management methodologies? This paper addresses these issues, and concludes that public organizations will have to change their organizational structures radically as well as their enterprise systems in order to implement business process management concepts successfully. The paper also discusses the benefits of public sector process management, and focuses in some detail on two of the reasons that public organizations have incentive to implement business process management methodologies.

This study aims to analyze international scientific production from 1960 to 2023 on business process management (BPM), highlighting the latest trends in BPM in the field of management and business during the 21st century.

We conducted a bibliometric analysis of 729 BPM articles from management and business journals using the SCOPUS database and VOSviewer software to map the scholarly landscape.

Nearly 45% of the papers were published between 2018 and 2023, prominently featuring the Business Process Management Journal. The University of São Paulo and Queensland University of Technology were the most prolific institutions. Significant emerging trends identified include Strategic Management, Digital Transformation, and IoT. Author Röglinger was noted for the highest publication rate.

The analysis was restricted to journal articles from one database, potentially overlooking insights from conferences, books, and other formats.

The study highlights the significant benefits of integrating technologies like Artificial Intelligence and IoT in BPM, improving operational efficiency, competitiveness, and innovation in adaptability and service personalization.

Technological advancements in BPM could enhance employment, require new skills, support a sustainable economy, and improve organizational transparency and service accessibility, bolstering corporate social responsibility and inclusion.

This research offers a unique overview of the integration of emerging technologies in BPM, shedding light on their strategic and social implications, and providing critical insights for optimizing processes and fostering business innovation.

The paper aims to analyse the construct of business model innovation (BMI) in the digital and sustainable landscape, investigating the key role of boundary strategies. The paper advances a comprehensive framework aimed at further understanding the overlap among digitalization, sustainability and BMI development, by a “boundary approach”.

The paper follows a theoretical approach based on an in-depth review of relevant literature on BMI, digitalization and sustainability as relevant megatrends and, boundary management. By critically integrating the literature, a framework is developed with the objective of supporting firms in the current transformation challenges.

The paper highlights the interplay among BMIs, megatrends and boundary management. The pressures and opportunities driven by the technological changes have made even more relevant the management of resources placed in the boundary area. Our study shows how firms can rethink their BMs in the digital and sustainable landscape by providing a boundary-based framework.

The framework offers insights and guidelines to help practitioners manage the change processes dictated by digitalization and sustainability. The authors encourage a focus on boundary resources/capabilities to increase the effective management of the digitalization and sustainability processes, to grasp the external stimuli driven by these two megatrends and to develop new/renewed BMIs.

This study emphasizes the importance of developing new BMIs in the current digital and sustainable landscape starting from the analysis of firm’s boundaries. The paper enriches the BMI literature supporting the enhancement of boundary management, leading firms to overcome challenges in the digital and sustainable landscape.

Contemporary literature reveals that, to date, the poultry livestock sector has not received sufficient research attention. This particular industry suffers from unstructured supply chain practices, lack of awareness of the implications of the sustainability concept and failure to recycle poultry wastes. The current research thus attempts to develop an integrated supply chain model in the context of poultry industry in Bangladesh. The study considers both sustainability and supply chain issues in order to incorporate them in the poultry supply chain. By placing the forward and reverse supply chains in a single framework, existing problems can be resolved to gain economic, social and environmental benefits, which will be more sustainable than the present practices.

The theoretical underpinning of this research is ‘sustainability’ and the ‘supply chain processes’ in order to examine possible improvements in the poultry production process along with waste management. The research adopts the positivist paradigm and ‘design science’ methods with the support of system dynamics (SD) and the case study methods. Initially, a mental model is developed followed by the causal loop diagram based on in-depth interviews, focus group discussions and observation techniques. The causal model helps to understand the linkages between the associated variables for each issue. Finally, the causal loop diagram is transformed into a stock and flow (quantitative) model, which is a prerequisite for SD-based simulation modelling. A decision support system (DSS) is then developed to analyse the complex decision-making process along the supply chains.

The findings reveal that integration of the supply chain can bring economic, social and environmental sustainability along with a structured production process. It is also observed that the poultry industry can apply the model outcomes in the real-life practices with minor adjustments. This present research has both theoretical and practical implications. The proposed model’s unique characteristics in mitigating the existing problems are supported by the sustainability and supply chain theories. As for practical implications, the poultry industry in Bangladesh can follow the proposed supply chain structure (as par the research model) and test various policies via simulation prior to its application. Positive outcomes of the simulation study may provide enough confidence to implement the desired changes within the industry and their supply chain networks.

This study aimed to analyze top management commitment to business performance in the context of coffee processing firms in Guji Zone, Ethiopia.

The study was conducted on coffee processing firms in Guji Zone, Ethiopia, using a mixed approach with a descriptive and explanatory design. A systematic, simple random sampling technique was used to draw a sample. A total of 345 respondents were actively involved in the survey. Descriptive and inferential statistics were applied to analyze the data through SPSS-20.

The results indicate that members of top management in the sector were committed to promoting their business performance. The findings of the study also reveal that top management commitment has significant and positive effects on the overall business performance of coffee processing firms.

The study was limited to the coffee processing industry and generalization of the results to other sectors may be questionable. Similarly, the study was presented using primary data only. Thus, future researchers will be advised to strengthen their findings using the secondary data.

The study’s implications have contributed to theoretical, practical and managerial perspectives. The findings validate and refine existing theories, provide practical insights for coffee processing firms and offer guidance for managerial decision-making and leadership development.

Up to the time of the authors' literature review, no study with a similar topic on coffee processing firms in the Guji Zone was found and it is believed to be the first literature evidence for future researchers.

The paper reports a study that evaluated the effectiveness and usefulness of Business and Technology Management (BTM), a management practice for formulating business digital strategies that address organization, processes and technology in an integrative way.

The research followed action design research guidelines that combine the methodological principles of design science research and action research.

Evidence from the study confirmed the adequacy and usefulness of BTM as a solution to an old management problem of internal fit, synergies, alignment or strategic integration. It also led to an improvement in its way of working, namely, a management practice with four process stages: (1) define trade objectives, (2) design an integrated business model, (3) manage the business transformation and execution and (4) evaluate the results obtained.

The study exemplifies how practice research can be used within a long-term research pursuit to provide empirical evidence that permits evaluating and improving a research-originated management approach.

Being a theory-for-action, BTM has direct relevance for managers engaged in defining organizational and technological strategies connected with business results. The paper discloses an improved version of BTM together with a description of its application in a medium-sized company operating in the tourism sector.

BTM addresses a recurrent issue raised by researchers and practitioners concerning a failure to bring different management perspectives together when formulating a strategy. Therefore, its value lies in its ability to assist in the integration of management perspectives into business development initiatives.

The objective of this study is to investigate how country risk, different political actions from the government and bureaucratic behavior influence the activities in industry supply chains (SCs) in emerging markets. The main objective of this study is to investigate the influence of these external stakeholders’ elements to the demand-side and supply-side drivers and barriers for improving competitiveness of Ready-Made Garment (RMG) industry in the way of analyzing supply chain. Considering the phenomenon of recent change in the RMG business environment and the competitiveness issues this study uses the principles of stakeholder and resource dependence theory and aims to find out some factors which influence to make an efficient supply chain for improving competitiveness. The RMG industry of Bangladesh is the case application of this study. Following a positivist paradigm, this study adopts a two phase sequential mixed-method research design consisting of qualitative and quantitative approaches. A tentative research model is developed first based on extensive literature review. Qualitative field study is then carried out to fine tune the initial research model. Findings from the qualitative method are also used to develop measures and instruments for the next phase of quantitative method. A survey is carried out with sample of top and middle level executives of different garment companies of Dhaka city in Bangladesh and the collected quantitative data are analyzed by partial least square-based structural equation modeling. The findings support eight hypotheses. From the analysis the external stakeholders’ elements like bureaucratic behavior and country risk have significant influence to the barriers. From the internal stakeholders’ point of view the manufacturers’ and buyers’ drivers have significant influence on the competitiveness. Therefore, stakeholders need to take proper action to reduce the barriers and increase the drivers, as the drivers have positive influence to improve competitiveness.

This study has both theoretical and practical contributions. This study represents an important contribution to the theory by integrating two theoretical perceptions to identify factors of the RMG industry’s SC that affect the competitiveness of the RMG industry. This research study contributes to the understanding of both external and internal stakeholders of national and international perspectives in the RMG (textile and clothing) business. It combines the insights of stakeholder and resource dependence theories along with the concept of the SC in improving effectiveness. In a practical sense, this study certainly contributes to the Bangladeshi RMG industry. In accordance with the desire of the RMG manufacturers, the research has shown that some influential constructs of the RMG industry’s SC affect the competitiveness of the RMG industry. The outcome of the study is useful for various stakeholders of the Bangladeshi RMG industry sector ranging from the government to various private organizations. The applications of this study are extendable through further adaptation in other industries and various geographic contexts.

Digitalization is affecting business management and pushing for new strategies, innovative products, new ways to communicate with stakeholders and new channels. This phenomenon is unavoidable, and companies have to face it in a holistic and integrated way. One holistic and interconnected approach, when studying enterprise challenges, is represented by the business process management method, a fitting mechanism when digitalization needs to be amalgamated in business practices, enhancing the intellectual capital (IC), therefore, this study researches digitalization under business process lens, in a sample of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), that constitute an under-explored set, as regard digitalization, process management and IC. The research aims to explore the digital tools and business processes link and the related impact on performance, benefits and IC.

In exploring digitalization, a sample of Italian SMEs was scrutinized. The data were elaborated using two types of tests: (1) the binomial tests for the categorical questions and (2) the zeta test was used for quantitative variables. Furthermore, the partial least square (PLS)-SEM model was applied.

Findings reveal that some digital tools are more adopted in the sample analysed, and also some particular digital tools are more inclined to support certain business processes. Furthermore, not only performance benefits emerge, but also benefits in terms of better communication and faster decisions, supporting the decision making process of managers, also considering that business processes approach is one way to manage IC.

Thanks to the conducted research it is possible to make aware managers and owners of SMEs to consciously choose the right type of digitalization investments, without neglecting training programme, to realize the company digital transformation, providing a map and bearing in mind the value added creation, protecting their IC.

The paper's originality is represented by the contribution in opening the black box about digitalization, business process management and IC in small and medium companies.

The paper presents a research methodology that could be used to carry out a systematic literature review on the current state of the art of the technological development in the field of the digitalization and unphysicalization of supply chains (SCs). A three-dimensional conceptual framework focusing on the relationship between Digital Technologies (DTs), business processes and SC performance is presented. The study identifies the emerging practices and areas of SC management that could be positively affected by the implementation of DTs. With this in mind, the emerging practices have a high probability to be considered future best practices.

A systematic literature review was conducted on DTs in SC management. The methodology used aims to algorithmically and objectively standardize the information incorporated into thousands of scientific documents. Selected papers were analyzed to investigate the recent literature on SC digitalization and unphysicalization. A total of 87 DTs were selected to be analyzed and subsequently grouped into 11 macro-categories. 17 business processes linked to SC management are taken into account and 17 different impacts on SC management are presented. From a set of 1,585 papers, 5,060 emerging practices were collected and singularly summarized combining DT, business process and impact on SC performance.

A unique analytical perspective provided represents an important evolution when trying to organize the current literature on SC management. The widely used DTs in the practices and the most considered business processes and impacts are highlighted and described. The three-dimensional conceptual framework is graphically represented to allow for the emergence of the best combinations of DT, business process and impact on SC performance. These combinations suggest the most promising areas for the implementation of the emerging practices for SC digitalization and unphysicalization. Additional findings identify and define the most important contexts in which Big Data contributes to SC performance.

The research methodology used is offering progress through which to systemize the current practices as well as detect the potential of digitalization and unphysicalization under the three-dimensional conceptual framework. The paper provides a structured proposal for promising future research directions, assuming that the five research gaps as findings of this research could be the basis for prescriptions, as well as a future research agenda and theory development. Moreover, this research contributes to current managerial issues concerning SC management, referred to data and information management, efficiency and productivity of SC processes, market performance, SC relationship management and risk management in SC.