Research Opportunities in Business Process Management and Performance Measurement from a Constructivist View

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/kpm.1495
• Published date: 01 January 2016
• Date: 01 January 2016

■Research Article

Research Opportunities in Business

Process Management and Performance

Measurement from a Constructivist View

Rogerio Tadeu de Oliveira Lacerda

1

*, Leonardo Ensslin

1

,

Sandra Rolim Ensslin

2

,LuanaKnoff

3

and Claudelino Martins Dias Junior

4

1

Department of Business Administration, Federal University of Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, Brazil

2

Department of Business Administration, UNISUL, Florianopolis, Brazil

3

Accounting Department, Federal University of Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, Brazil

4

Embraco, Joinville, Brazil

This research paper aims to discover research opportunities in business process management and performance mea-

surement from a constructivist view. The nature of this research is exploratory and descriptive, and the research

method was performed in a qualitative way. The process narrowed down 2142articles, gathered from a search of sci-

entific databases, and identified 16 articles that were relevant to the research and highly cited. The analysis found that

most of the articles follow the realistic approach, and there is a need to analyse the decision-making process in an in-

dividual manner. The measurement criteria are identified by searching the scientific literature, in most cases using an

ordinal scale without any integration process to present the results to the decision-maker.Regarding the management

aspects, most of the articles do not follow a structured process to measure the current situation and generate improve-

ment opportunities. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

INTRODUCTION

Business process management (BPM) allows a com-

pany to organize its resources and capabilities in a

way that contributes systematically and continu-

ously to the determined goals of its managers

(Benner and Veloso, 2008; Lee and Ahn, 2008), be-

sides being a determinant factor of the capacity of

an organization to adapt and respond to the threats

and emergent opportunities (Bititci et al., 2011).

The success of BPM implementation demands the

involvement of its partners to discuss, redraw and

implement the new processes, eliminating and re-

ducing the activities that add little value and re-

work. It is an initiative that requires, besides the

involvement of the senior management, a strong

alignment with the strategic goals of the company

(Dangayach and Deshmukh, 2001; Rosemann and

de Bruin, 2005; Trkman, 2010).

This need to align the execution of the company’s

processes with its corporate strategy is a conse-

quence of the managers’need to understand the

company’s business processes to manage them cor-

rectly (Tan et al., 2007, 2008).

In this way, it is necessary that, together with the

process management, the company can rely on

some elements aiding the decision that expand the

decision-makers’understanding of how the pro-

cesses contribute to the achievement of its strategic

goals: in other words, the final results targeted by

its managers. This knowledge-building activity is

known as business measurement from a construc-

tivist view (Bana e Costa et al., 1999; De Moraes

et al., 2010; Lacerda et al., 2011, 2014b; da Rosa

et al., 2012; Ensslin et al., 2013).

That delimitation of the research subject refers to

the need to analyse the topic from the perspective

of its measurement, generating a second focus re-

search, the focus of performance measurement, in

which the particularities of each organization must

be known and considered.

In this research paper, the literature review on

BPM will be performed according to the following

definition of performance measurement:

*Correspondence to: Rogerio Tadeu de Oliveira, Department of

Business Administration, Federal University of Santa Catarina,

Florianopolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil.

E-mail: rogerlacerda@gmail.com

Knowledge and Process Management

Volume 23 Number 1 pp 18–30 (2016)

Published online 29 December 2015 in Wiley Online Library

(www.wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/kpm.1495

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.