The composition of tasks performed by each type of labor may also affect business performance. If family workers may also perform management and supervisory duties (particularly the household head), their work can have larger effects on output than that of hired workers, who may perform only manual tasks. The performance of managerial and supervisory tasks by family members would reduce the substitutability between family labor and hired labor, an assumption that is confirmed for Vietnamese household businesses [7] and for female entrepreneurs in Madagascar.
Process orientation is an accepted paradigm of organizational design and a source of corporate performance (Kohlbacher and Reijers 2013; Recker and Mendling 2016). Today, many organizations adopt business process management (BPM) methods and tools to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of their processes and to comply with regulations (van der Aalst 2013; Alter 2015b). However, every organization experiences deviant processes, i.e., processes that show different behavior than intended, a phenomenon also known as process deviance (Weidlich et al. 2011; Depaire et al. 2013). Despite its ubiquity, knowledge on process deviance is in its infancy such that current discussion in the literature calls for further research (Rosemann 2014; Müllerleile et al. 2016; Mertens et al. 2016a; Delias 2017).
business and management paul hoang 2nd edition pdf 262
In the brainstorming and narrowing-down phases of our Delphi study, we answered the first research question by identifying and structuring reasons for process deviance. As analytical lens, we chose the perspective of process managers. Though not being operationally involved in process execution, process managers are familiar with and responsible for business processes end-to-end both content-wise and regarding process performance. Thus, they play a key role in the coordination of work and the management of process deviance. For the same reason, process managers require neither process models nor logs to reason about whether a business process is deviant. This feature strengthens the ex ante view on process deviance and enables identifying broadly applicable reasons for process deviance. In the rating phase of our Delphi study, we addressed the second question by rating the identified reasons with respect to their importance for causing deviance in routine and nonroutine processes. The distinction between routine and nonroutine processes is common in organizational science, as both process types capture the nature of work in terms of variation and variety (Lillrank 2003), two concepts closely linked to process deviance. The distinction between routine and nonroutine processes is also relevant from an IS perspective, as the digital age, which is characterized by volatility, uncertainty, and complexity, and ambiguity (Bennett and Lemoine 2014), leads to a shift from routine to nonroutine processes (Gimpel et al. 2018). Between 60 and 80% of all processes are supposed to be nonroutine processes (Swenson 2010).
In the literature, business processes are classified based on different criteria. The most common classification is that into core, support, and management processes, splitting business processes according to their role in corporate value creation (Armistead 1999; vom Brocke et al. 2016). Core processes are business processes whose customers are from outside the organization and willing to pay for products and services. Support processes ensure that core processes continue to function, whereas management processes plan, organize, communicate, monitor, and control corporate activities (Harmon 2016). Another popular classification, which stems from organizational science, focuses on how business processes deal with variation (i.e., deviance from objectives) and variety (i.e., the number of process variants) (Lillrank 2003). Accordingly, processes are split into standard, routine, and nonroutine processes. This classification is similar to Johnston et al. (2012) distinction between runner, repeater, and stranger processes, the difference being that Johnston et al. also account for volume (i.e., the number of executions). Encompassing a single variant with a defined input and output, standard processes are very simple. As combinations of standard processes, routine processes feature an arbitrary, but fixed number of variants that can be specified prior to execution via imperative process models, e.g., following the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) or Event-driven Process Chain (EPC) standards. Routine processes cover the predictable part of organizational behavior. In routine processes, the search for errors and solutions can proceed analytically and logically. In contrast, nonroutine processes deal with semi- or unstructured problems. They entail high uncertainty and degrees of freedom, covering the unpredictable and emerging part of organizational behavior. With the input and output of nonroutine processes being at least partially undefined, they cannot be exhaustively specified prior to execution in terms of imperative process models. If at all, this can be done via declarative process models or process flexibility strategies such as flexibility-by-underspecifiation (Schonenberg et al. 2008; di Ciccio et al. 2017). Due to their novelty, however, declarative process models are neither as mature nor as broadly used in industry as imperative process models. Importantly, although nonroutine processes are hard-to-capture via process models, they can show different behavior than intended, and thus be deviant. As the distinction between routine and nonroutine processes is more closely related to process deviance than the classification into core, support, and management processes, we adopted it as analytical lens to answer our second operational research question. Further, the distinction between routine and nonroutine processes is relevant from an IS perspective, as the digital age entails a shift from routine to nonroutine processes (Swenson 2010; Bennett and Lemoine 2014).
Finally, future research should build on the identified and further validated reasons for process deviance when theorizing about the deviance proneness of business processes and exploring the relationship between deviance proneness and process deviance. We believe that deviance proneness is an important, yet under-researched concept, as it takes an ex ante and managerial view on process deviance. These resulting insights should also be leveraged for design-oriented research. Potentially worthwhile design artifacts are deviance-aware process valuation, prioritization, and improvement methods as well as and decision support systems for deviance-aware process portfolio management. Regarding context-aware BPM, a potential design artifact is management practices for dealing with the identified reasons for process deviance in routine and nonroutine processes. 2ff7e9595c
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