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Business & Information Systems Engineering
Published in: Business & Information Systems Engineering 5/2012

01-10-2012 | Research Paper

The Impact of Business Process Complexity on Business Process Standardization

An Empirical Study

Authors: Dipl.-Kfm. Markus Schäfermeyer, Dr. Christoph Rosenkranz, Prof. Dr. Roland Holten

Published in: Business & Information Systems Engineering | Issue 5/2012

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Abstract

Today’s organizations are struggling with increasing business process complexity and face serious problems when standardizing business processes. A possible strategy seems to be to enhance standardization efforts in order to ensure standardization success. In this paper, we analyze the triangle relationship between standardization effort, business process complexity, and business process standardization. We test the hypotheses that higher business process complexity is related to higher standardization effort and lower business process standardization as well as that higher standardization effort is related to higher business process standardization. We report on the development and testing of a conceptual model that allows to understand the impact of business process complexity on business process standardization and standardization effort. Findings from a survey among 255 business process management experts are used to evaluate our hypotheses. Our results suggest that business process complexity has to be considered as an important driver of standardization effort and constrains business process standardization. Moreover, we show that higher standardization effort cannot compensate for higher business process complexity to ensure business process standardization.
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Appendix
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Metadata
Title
The Impact of Business Process Complexity on Business Process Standardization
An Empirical Study
Authors
Dipl.-Kfm. Markus Schäfermeyer
Dr. Christoph Rosenkranz
Prof. Dr. Roland Holten
Publication date
01-10-2012
Publisher
SP Gabler Verlag
Published in
Business & Information Systems Engineering / Issue 5/2012
Print ISSN: 2363-7005
Electronic ISSN: 1867-0202
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12599-012-0224-6

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