A conceptual framework for process‐oriented employee appraisals and rewards

• Published date: 01 January 2021
• Date: 01 January 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/kpm.1644

RESEARCH ARTICLE

A conceptual framework for process-oriented employee

appraisals and rewards

Aygun Shafagatova | Amy Van Looy

Faculty of Economics and Business

Administration, Department of Business

Informatics and Operations Management,

Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

Correspondence

Aygun Shafagatova, Faculty of Economics and

Business Administration, Department of

Business Informatics and Operations

Management, Ghent University, Ghent,

Belgium.

Email: aygun.shafagatova@ugent.be

This study aims to translate generic human resource management (HRM) appraisals

and rewards toward an organization's business processes for better aligning organiza-

tional practices to a process orientation and for a successful business process man-

agement (BPM) adoption. We conducted an interdisciplinary study with three

phases. Firstly, we conducted a literature study to obtain a list of typical business

process characteristics that can be relevant for HRM appraisals and rewards. Sec-

ondly, we used an expert panel to validate and refine this list. Finally, we integrated

those concepts into generic theories and frameworks on HRM appraisals and rewards

through a translation study. We provide a conceptual framework of process-oriented

HRM appraisals and rewards that integrates HRM and BPM concepts. The frame-

work presents process-specific characteristics to supplement generic HRM appraisals

and rewards frameworks. Given the challenges of aligning function-based appraisals

and rewards to a business process orientation, the framework can help tackle inter-

disciplinary challenges and brings a high-level understanding of what to focus on dur-

ing this alignment.

1|INTRODUCTION

Given today's highly dynamic and complex business environments,

many organizations are rethinking their structure and management

systems to better align their business processes with those new reali-

ties (Armistead, Pritchard, & Machin, 1999). Business process manage-

ment (BPM) and business process orientation (BPO) intend to make

an organization flatter, more results- and customer-oriented and less

silo-focused. BPO refers to the more holistic approach by also aligning

the organization's structure and culture around business processes

(McCormack, 2001; Van Looy, De Backer, & Poels, 2011). The people-

related factors of BPM research, such as considering roles and respon-

sibilities, performance management, employee behavior and motiva-

tion (Davenport, 1993; vom Brocke et al., 2014) are part of this

broader approach. BPM should be integrated with other management

systems in an organization for better performance results (Dani-

lova, 2018). In this regard, employee appraisals and rewards, which

are traditionally managed in terms of functional departments (Noe

et al., 2014), have become one of the critical practices that should be

considered for a successful BPM implementation (Kohlbacher, 2010;

Willaert et al., 2009).

The BPM literature agrees on the importance of adapting the

appraisals and rewards systems to the needs of business processes

in order to better motivate employees to contribute to process per-

formance and ensure sustainable BPM adoption (Van Looy, De

Backer, & Poels, 2014; Willaert et al., 2009). Performance manage-

ment is a fundamental part of BPM because the BPM

implementations are mainly done to improve the process and orga-

nizational performance (Tadeu et al., 2016). However, employee

performance management and rewarding, which has a huge impact

on employee motivation and performance, has not been exten-

sivelycoveredintheBPMliterature.Giventhegrowingattention

for BPO and for contingency factors in HRM (Delery & Doty, 1996;

Wood, 1999), research is needed that combines the HRM and BPM

disciplines with the aim of exploring the possibilities of integrating

HRM appraisals and rewards concepts to the context of business

process thinking. To fill this gap, the present study addresses three

research questions.

Received: 13 May 2020 Accepted: 19 May 2020

DOI: 10.1002/kpm.1644

90 © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Knowl Process Manag. 2021;28:90–104.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/kpm