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Identifying handovers is an important but difficult to achieve goal for companies as handovers have advantages allowing for specialisation in processes as well as disadvantages by creating erroneous interfaces.

Conceptualisation of a method based on theory and evaluation with company data using a process model repository.

The method allows to evaluate handovers from the perspective of roles in processes and grouping of employees in organisational units. It uses existing process model repositories connected with organisational chart information in companies to determine the density of handovers. The method is successfully evaluated using the example of a major telecommunications company with 1,010 process models in its repository.

Companies can determine on various levels, up to the overall organisational level, in which parts of the company efforts are best spent to manage handovers in an optimal way.

This paper is first in showing how handovers can be conceptualised and identified with a large-scale method.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the role of increasing employees’ level of continuous improvement (CI) empowerment, i.e. employees’ knowledge and understanding of CI, the possibility of open communication and support from the work environment regarding CI, in the implementation of CI over time.

Based on the theory of structural empowerment, the authors test the research question using evidence from a case study in a European financial services provider. Data are gathered with questionnaires on a team level and cover a period of 2.5 years including 780 participants.

The findings show that after conducting a CI programme in the case, there is a significant increase in employees’ CI empowerment over time, which has a positive but time-lagged relationship with the level of CI implementation.

Implications are that CI empowerment can be created sustainably and is an important factor in establishing CI in a company, but that it takes time until empowerment leads to changes in behaviour. However, it has to be considered that these implications are solely derived from empirical results from a single company.

Financial service providers should invest in establishing CI empowerment and consider a delay in realising measurable benefits in terms of the level of CI implementation.

This paper is the first empirical study to examine the relationship between employee CI empowerment and the implementation of CI from a longitudinal perspective.

Our understanding of the influence of institutional conditions on process innovation is still limited, despite managers’ need to know which factors should be considered in decision-making and governments should be aware of how to foster process innovation through the provision of attractive institutions. Therefore, this paper aims to examine how institutional dimensions such as workforce, political instability, labor regulation, corruption, tax administration and transportation influence process innovation in smaller firms located in emerging countries other than the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).

A data set from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys questioning over 20,000 companies from 41 emerging countries supplemented by the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita for each country was used and analyzed by the means of general linear mixed models. The analysis emphasized small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and excluded BRICS countries.

The findings demonstrate which institutional factors matter for process innovation depending on company size and GDP.

This paper advances research on the influence of institutions on firm innovation – the institution–process innovation relationship in emerging countries other than the BRICS in particular. By considering the role of company size and GDP per capita on the institution–process innovation relationship, the paper offers more nuanced insights compared with prior studies and thus makes a strong contribution to the innovation theory. The data used are not suitable for a longitudinal study the same refers to capturing the variety found in the countries even those coming from the same geographic area.

The results provide practitioners, e.g. managers of SMEs, with concrete ideas on how to improve process innovation in their companies. Other actors such as policymakers too can benefit from the results as they will allow the design of more target group-oriented measures, aspects that can ultimately lead to more sustainable businesses.

By focusing on process innovation and emerging countries, the paper contributes to growing research efforts in emerging countries beyond the BRICS. Thus, the results add more diversity to the study of process innovation and its influencing external (institutional) factors. The emphasis on SMEs also allows us to highlight differences between different categories of SMEs.

Process-oriented behavior is a prerequisite for transforming a company into a process-oriented organization, but is difficult to achieve among employees. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of role plays on adapting process-oriented behavior in daily work practices.

Using the theory of cognitive dissonance, the authors investigate whether role plays are an effective learning method. This study was conducted over a period of two years and included 212 participants of a financial services provider.

The results reveal that the role play used had a persistent impact on employees’ process-oriented behavior in terms of their process knowledge, their cross-functional coordination, and their continuous process reflection, but not on their process awareness. Thus, the authors conclude that despite high application costs, role plays are beneficial for financial services companies to train their employees.

While the data stem from participants within one financial service provider only, this study contributes to the understanding how process-oriented behavior can be promoted sustainably in organizations.

The results indicate that companies aiming for process orientation should apply role plays to achieve a change in behavior of employees.

This research contributes to the understanding of role plays as an effective learning method to adopt process-oriented behavior.

The business engineering (BE) methodology is used to design process-oriented and customer-centred companies in a systematic and holistic way. However, BE demands a high learning effort with regard to the logical flow, instruments and supporting software. The purpose of this paper is to explore which elements of action learning are most useful regarding BE.

To enable students to learn BE, a graduate-level course based on action learning is designed. Within a one-week schedule, participants are guided through the three phases of BE covering 31 learning elements. A post-test measures the learning experience. Regression analysis identifies elements that lead to high learning performance.

Results from five courses with 79 students reveal that action learning is useful to obtain declarative and procedural knowledge of BE. Learning elements delivering theoretical input and the use of an exemplary case could be reduced, while more time should be devoted to group work on a self-developed case study.

The paper is based on a specific course design for the topic of BE, which might limit the results’ transferability to other business process management (BPM) teaching areas. However, it provides implications about the decisive elements for learning how to design process-oriented companies.

The results can be used by instructors to design more meaningful courses on BE.

The paper delivers new insights into how issues of BPM should be taught. This area, particularly regarding BE, has received little research attention.

The purpose of this paper is to reveal how information and communication technology (ICT) can empower shop floor workers in collaborative manufacturing environments.

The authors gather data from a mobile maintenance department of a steel manufacturing company and apply the method of a scenario-based design. The authors use data from interviews, observations and company documents to create problem and activity scenarios. The authors also demonstrate the development of a worker-centric digital design in multiple demonstration and evaluation cycles.

The authors find that ICT can be used to ensure that empowerment is not only a concept, but can sustainably empower daily operations.

The authors contribute to theory by showing how structural empowerment can be used as a guiding theoretical lens to design ICT for shop floor workers in collaborative manufacturing work environments. These implications are limited to findings from a single case study.

The results provide an overview of different empowerment dimensions, namely, the access to information, resources, support and opportunities, that can support employees in collaborative manufacturing environments.

This paper is first in suggesting a framework of how ICT designs can be used to empower shop floor workers in collaborative manufacturing environments.

Six Sigma is considered to be an important management philosophy to obtain satisfied customers, but financial service organisations have been slow to adopt Six Sigma issues so far. Despite the extensive effort that has been invested and benefits that can be obtained, the systematic implementation of Six Sigma in financial service organisations is limited. As a companywide implementation framework is missing so far, the purpose of this paper is to fill this gap.

This paper presents a conceptual framework derived from literature and evaluated by experts, with a focus on financial services.

The results show that it is very important to link Six Sigma with the strategic as well as the operations level. Furthermore, although Six Sigma is a very important method for improving quality of processes, others such as Lean Management are also used. This requires a superior project portfolio management to coordinate resources and projects of Six Sigma with the other methods used.

The developed framework provides a new contribution to the theory of applying Six Sigma in financial service institutions.

Beside the theoretical contribution, the framework can be used by financial service companies to evaluate their Six Sigma activities. Thus, the framework grounded through literature and empirical data will be a useful guide for sustainable and successful implementation of a Six Sigma initiative in financial service organisations.

The paper contributes, by empirical research through expert interviews, to develop a Six Sigma implementation framework for financial institutions.

Lean thinking is important for a successful implementation of process-driven changes. Especially financial service providers are forced to improve their organisational efficiency due to intense competition and regulatory burdens. The purpose of this paper is to identify how lean financial service companies in Germany are.

A quantitative survey published online is used. In total, 3,624 employees from every hierarchical level participated in the study.

The results not only reveal that there is only a moderate lean thinking in financial service companies. We rather observe a “lean fata morgana”. Employees in general believe they are leaner than their actual behaviour discloses. In addition, managers perceive their work environment leaner than subordinates do. At the same time, managers do not behave lean as they spend almost a third of their working time with operational work instead of guiding the employees.

Answers are based on the anonymous, subjective ratings of employees and thus statements regarding single organisations cannot be made.

The results can be used by managers to address typical weak aspects when introducing lean management to improve the success chances. Furthermore, the questionnaire can be applied for assessments for a single organisation before an introduction of lean.

For the first time, this paper presents results which cover the lean degree beyond a single company’s perspective. The results allow for an indication which aspects of lean are unincisive with regard to functional areas and hierarchical levels of financial service providers.

Many companies still use paper documents within their service processes, which is supposed to be inefficient, and a digitalisation of documents is a promising alternative. However, such a change is expensive and the process typically has to be adapted. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to show how business process simulation (BPS) can be used to forecast the effects of the introduction of electronic documents.

This paper presents a case study of a German bank, and shows how BPS can be used to evaluate the introduction of electronic documents in financial service processes.

The case study shows how BPS can be applied to evaluate the implications of introducing IT systems using the example of e-files. The results reveal that not only cycle time, but also costs and administrative workload, can be reduced, while the number of processed orders increases.

On the one hand the data generated in the simulation results can form the basis for feasibility studies regarding IT investments, e.g. for the migration of historical data from the old document management system system. On the other hand, further actions can be deduced for sales staff and other processes, which can use employees’ additional free time.

Real case examples are rare, as many companies do not apply simulations. This paper is the first to analyse the impact of introducing electronic documents in service processes using BPS. The paper provides an approach how to conceptualise such settings.

A major problem of operational control in the services industry is the integration of customers in the delivery process. The aim of this paper is to develop a method that allows service companies to evaluate the impact of customer integration on operational control in service processes.

The development of the proposed method follows a design science approach. Thus, the method is conceptualised on the basis of production, services and information systems research. A case study of loan processing in a bank serves to evaluate the applicability of the method.

As a result of this study, customer integration should be included into operational control following three steps: identification of the type of customer integration; quantification and characterisation of the impact of the integration; and identification of the appropriate mechanisms of operational control to deal with the customer integration better. The results of the case study show that customer integration has an impact on certain activities within a service process only but the results can be used to enhance operational control.

The method can be used by process managers of service companies to identify the impact of customer integration on operational control. Thus, decisions within operational control and consequently the overall productivity of a service process can be improved.

The paper delivers a new insight how customer integration and operational control can be linked in service processes. Thus, a theoretical gap in service operations literature is filled. Furthermore, the case study demonstrates how the method can be used in practice.