Project Type
Preproposal PhD-Thesis

Description
Cultural aspects essentially influence the success of business processes. Even though many academics acknowledge the importance of considering cultural aspects in BPM there is hardly a discussion on how to systematically account for the soft factor culture in BPM. Representatives of companies also see culture as playing a significant role in process management. Still, this understanding does not translate to adequate attention in designing business processes. One explanation is that activities focus more on efficiency, i.e. hard factors like time, quality and costs, than on soft factors, like employee and customer satisfaction. Neglecting important cultural aspects, therefore, often means business processes lack sustainable success. Louis Gerstner sums up the relevance of cultural factors: "I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn't just one aspect of the game - it is the game. In the end, an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value." For this reason, it is necessecary to focus on cultural aspects in BPM both, in science and practice.