An understanding of business process standardization

Globalization and increased competition, pressure organizations to reduce costs and be more productive. Increasingly, organizations are adopting a process-centric view to efficiently and effectively utilize resources and improve competitive parity. A strategy that can ensure consistent delivery of services and optimize costs as well as benefits is ‘Business Process Standardization’, whereby processes abide by metrics and aid effective understanding, communication and design. Given the importance of process standardization, there is a surprising dearth of research in this area. Particularly lacking is a clear and operationalisable definition. In attention to this lacuna, this paper offers an understanding of the theoretical construct - Business Process Standardization (BPS) - through a rigorous and systematic literature review

Developing a Governance Model for Successful Business Process Standardization

Standardization of business processes is considered as an important instrument in the context of business process management. However, research in that field has mostly focused on the impact of business process standardization on business process performance while only a few attempts have been made to determine the success factors for effective process standardization, yet. Moreover, a major issue in any standardization initiative is to convince decision makers to follow the standard. This is particularly true when it comes to process standardization: how can a firm be sure that its different divisions have implemented the process standard and that the employees adhere to the rules? Following an action design research approach, we introduce a governance model that consists of a role concept for ensuring successful process standardization. As part of the research process, we provide first steps of evaluation through a qualitative case study at an international aviation company