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A Causal Mechanism Approach to Explain Business Process Adoption and Rejection Phenomena

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Business Process Management Forum (BPM 2020)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 392))

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Abstract

Introducing change to organizational business processes is an inherently social event. People perform process activities to realize corporate and personal goals. When confronted with changes to their daily routine environments, people, being social actors, reflect critically on the changes presented to them. Collective interactions may lead to acceptance or rejection decisions about the process change, which could be why process change projects regularly fail during their implementation phase. Managing the complexity of interacting social mechanisms during the process implementation phase may be decisive in determining the success or failure of process change projects.

The lack of social mechanism models in this field indicates a business domain less managed. Problems during the process implementation phase may have financial implications, and can cause delays that reduce customer satisfaction.

This paper presents a research approach, consisting of a conceptual ontology model together with a mechanism discovery method. The approach seeks to uncover causal social mechanisms underlying adoption and rejection phenomena during business process implementation. It aims to strengthen research seeking to explain ‘why things happen’ during change initiatives.

The impact of this research envisions a central mechanism repository to further advance BPM practices. The mechanism repository together with the change ontology model could assist with the analysis of social dynamics from the people perspective to improve the management of process implementation projects.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Edith Cowan University, Perth, Australia

    Andreas Brönnimann

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  1. Andreas Brönnimann
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Correspondence to Andreas Brönnimann .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Dirk Fahland

  2. FBK-irst, Trento, Italy

    Chiara Ghidini

  3. University of Muenster, Münster, Germany

    Jörg Becker

  4. University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia

    Marlon Dumas

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Brönnimann, A. (2020). A Causal Mechanism Approach to Explain Business Process Adoption and Rejection Phenomena. In: Fahland, D., Ghidini, C., Becker, J., Dumas, M. (eds) Business Process Management Forum. BPM 2020. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 392. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58638-6_18

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58638-6_18

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-58637-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-58638-6

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