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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.

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.

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.

The study show several limitations that might be assigned to the case survey methodology, such as use of secondary data or publication bias.

The authors provide considerable support which emergent risks matter in BPC projects.

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.

Business process change (BPC) initiatives are complex endeavors, which require many different sets of capabilities from the organization (e.g. IT, change management, project management capabilities). This study aims to examine which capabilities matter for successful BPC.

The paper posits that a structured analysis of case studies will help in identifying the capabilities relevant for BPC. Against this background, the paper adopted a case survey methodology, which combines the richness of case studies with the benefit of analyzing large quantities of data. The paper identified and analyzed 130 case studies reporting the past BPC project experiences.

The results show that project management, change management and IT capabilities have a positive impact on BPC project performance. IT capabilities also have a positive impact on the final process performance. Thus, IT capabilities matter for both BPC project and process performance.

The study had a few limitations, such as the use of secondary data. More so, assigning numbers to qualitative data unduly simplifies the complex phenomena under investigation and may leave out some of the richness of case research.

The findings provide considerable support for determining which capabilities practitioners need to leverage and develop when improving their business processes.

The study makes a number of contributions. It fills a gap in the literature concerning which capabilities matter for successful BPC. The paper offers a theoretical explanation of the effects of capabilities on the BPC project and process performance. Another contribution is methodological, in that the paper adopted the case survey method, which is still new to information systems research.