=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1562/paper0
|storemode=property
|title=From Scientific Process Management to Process Science: Towards an Empirical Research Agenda for Business Process Management
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1562/paper0.pdf
|volume=Vol-1562
|authors=Jan Mendling
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/zeus/Mendling16
}}
==From Scientific Process Management to Process Science: Towards an Empirical Research Agenda for Business Process Management==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1562/paper0.pdf
From Scientific Process Management to Process Science 1
From Scientific Process Management to Process
Science: Towards an empirical research agenda
for Business Process Management
Jan Mendling
Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, Austria
jan.mendling@wu.ac.at
Abstract. Business Process Management (BPM) as a research field
integrates di↵erent perspectives from the disciplines computer science,
management science and information systems research. Its evolution has
by been shaped by the corresponding conferences series, the Interna-
tional Conference on Business Process Management (BPM conference).
As much as in other academic discipline, there is an ongoing debate
that discusses the identity, the quality and maturity of the BPM field.
In this paper, we will formulate recommendations to further develop
BPM research based on the major findings a larger study by Recker and
Mendling, which will be published in the Business & Information Sys-
tems Engineering journal in 2016. This recent study of the BPM field
provides a good basis for discussing how BPM research can be further
developed towards a true process science, which will eventually provide
insights for practitioners on how to apply scientific process management.
1 Introduction
Van der Aalst and Damiani recently observed that the current discussions on
data science needs to be extended towards a process science perspective [1].
In this paper, we build on a recent study by Recker and Mendling [2] that
examines the state of the BPM field based on the proceedings papers of the BPM
conference. It is specifically interesting to focus on the BPM conference, because
a recent analysis [3] indicated that papers at the BPM conference are somewhat
reductionistic in scope, often pursuing either popular problems (such as process
modeling languages) or “exotic or even non-existing problems” [3, p.29]. These
observations emphasize the need to discuss how BPM research can be further
developed towards a true process science, which will eventually provide insights
for practitioners on how to apply scientific process management.
We proceed as follows. Section 2 presents findings to which extent the BPM
lifecycle is covered in recent research. Section 3 discusses to which extent certain
research components are utilized in BPM research. Section 4 presents recom-
mendations for future BPM research.
C. Hochreiner, S. Schulte (Eds.): 8th ZEUS Workshop, ZEUS 2016, Vienna, Austria,
27-28 January 2016, Proceedings – published at http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1562
2 Jan Mendling
2 Coverage of the BPM Lifecycle by BPM Conference
Papers
Business Process Management is often described as a lifecycle in order to clarify
how di↵erent BPM-related tasks fit together. Figure 1 shows a lifecycle with six
phases [4]. It also visualizes the coverage of BPM conference papers of each of
the phases with a pink dot. An important observation in [2] is that the phases of
the BPM lifecycle are covered to a di↵erent extent. Most research of the BPM
conference is dedicated to questions that are associated with the process discov-
ery and the process implementation phase. Typical matters that are studied in
these two pockets are models and modeling languages together with techniques
for verification, formal analysis and process mining. The least covered phases are
Papers
topics at BPM
associated Conference
with monitoring and with redesign.
Recker/Mendling, BISE 2015
Fig. 1: The BPM Lifecycle and Plotted Conference Papers
3 Research Components
The maturity of the research contributions are arguably linked to the quality of
methodological aspects as report in BPM conference papers. Therefore, Recker
and Mendling [2] examined whether papers explicitly discuss components of
research designs such as variables and hypotheses (for empirical research), or
artifact and theory (for engineering and design papers). They observe that, first,
the maturity in terms of methodological rigor appears to be a two-sided coin.
On the one hand, it appears that engineering papers that report on artifacts and
formal concepts are traditionally well-represented at the BPM conference. On the
other hand, from the viewpoint of empirical and theoretical work, however, there
are only a handful of BPM conference papers explicitly developing hypotheses,
From Scientific Process Management to Process Science 3
and very few stating independent or dependent variables. The share of papers
with explicit discussion of theory or hypotheses is also not notably increasing
over time. This is a concern, because one would expect that with increasing
maturity of research that is presented at a conference, studies would increasingly
evaluate and falsify theoretical predictions rather than explore empirical evidence
without a priori expectations. This also indicates concerns about the possibility
of retroduction as a means of scientific appraisal.
4 Recommendations
Developing BPM towards a true process science requires strengthening the em-
pirical side of BPM including research methods from behavioural science and
design science. Based on their analysis, Recker and Mendling formulate the fol-
lowing recommendations [2].
Progressing BPM as Formal Science: It appears that BPM as a formal
science is well-represented in the BPM conference series and that it is well-
understood by its key contributors. This is, for instance, reflected in the extensive
reference to formal Petri net concepts, algebraic definitions and utilization of
formal logics in many papers.
Progessing BPM as Behavioural Science: BPM as a behavioural science is
concerned with human and organizational behaviours in the context of manag-
ing business processes. Such aspects are important for studying, among others,
how process knowledge can be e↵ectively documented, which redesign sugges-
tions provide better efficiency, or how processes can be e↵ectively monitored.
It appears that there is a need to further strengthen BPM as a behavioural
science. Methodological guidelines is available in neighboring fields. The soft-
ware engineering community has turned to empirical research methods already
in the 1980s, most strongly inspired by works of Victor Basili [5]. There has
been a growing uptake of experimental research and corresponding methodolog-
ical guidelines as, for example, summarized in the book by Wohlin et al. [6].
Behavioural research on BPM can benefit from adopting such guidelines from
software engineering research.
Progressing BPM as Design Science: BPM as a design science can be con-
sidered a third line of inquiry. It perceives BPM as an engineering discipline
with the research objective of designing artifacts that provide superior utility
in the context of managing business processes. It requires the capability of a
researchers to design algorithms and systems, but it also requires empirical re-
search methods [7] for artefact design and evaluation. There appears to be a need
for taxonomies to structure the field and the relevant artifacts. This would start
with a definition of types of processes [8, p.11] but could expand to a typology
of improvement approaches, management techniques or BPM systems.
4 Jan Mendling
5 Conclusion
In this paper, we reflected upon BPM research as published in the BPM con-
ference proceedings between 2003 and 2014. Our review of this study focused
on the retrospective analysis of research approach, methodological maturity and
impact of BPM papers, and we generated a set of varied recommendations for
progressing research published at the BPM conference. More details of the study
including analyses and recommendations are published in [2].
References
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science with process science. IEEE T. Services Computing 8 (2015) 810–819
2. Recker, J., Mendling, J.: The state of the art of business process management
research as published in the bpm conference. Business & Information Systems
Engineering (2016)
3. van der Aalst, W.: Business process management: A comprehensive survey. ISRN
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4. Dumas, M., Rosa, M.L., Mendling, J., Reijers, H.A.: Fundamentals of Business
Process Management. Springer (2013)
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