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International Conference on Business Process Management

BPM 2011: Business Process Management Workshops pp 320–332Cite as

On Theoretical Foundations of Empirical Business Process Management Research

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 99))

Abstract

Business Process Management (BPM) has gained considerable importance in research and practice in recent years and has become one of the currently mostly discussed fields of research in the Information Systems (IS) discipline. BPM research aims to develop innovative methods and techniques for the management of business processes in the first place and, moreover, to build and further develop theory, which is an important objective of every scientific discipline. The state of theory is commonly considered a significant indicator for the maturity and grounding of a field of research. This article investigates theoretical foundations of empirical BPM research based on conceptual considerations and a review of empirical BPM literature. Our analysis shows that empirical BPM research is only to a certain extent guided by existing theory. Furthermore, the investigated contributions often refer to theories originating from different other fields of research, like economics or sociology. Implications and the potential of dedicated BPM theory development by means of empirical research are discussed.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Information Systems (IWi) at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI GmbH), Saarland University, Campus, Building D32, 66123, Saarbrücken, Germany

    Constantin Houy, Peter Fettke & Peter Loos

Authors
  1. Constantin Houy
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  2. Peter Fettke
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  3. Peter Loos
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Trento, Povo, Italy

    Florian Daniel

  2. CNAM-CEDRIC, Paris, France

    Kamel Barkaoui

  3. Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria

    Schahram Dustdar

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© 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Houy, C., Fettke, P., Loos, P. (2012). On Theoretical Foundations of Empirical Business Process Management Research. In: Daniel, F., Barkaoui, K., Dustdar, S. (eds) Business Process Management Workshops. BPM 2011. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 99. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-28108-2_32

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-28108-2_32

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-28107-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-28108-2

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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