A business process management capabilities perspective on organisation performance

Abstract

The resource-based view of the organisation has argued that organisations are unlikely to yield superior performance if they operate business process management (BPM) resources in isolation. As organisations attempt to boost their performance, the question becomes how to configure BPM resources to continuously improve organisation performance. In this paper, we posit that managerial BPM capabilities based on managers commitment and employee involvement have a positive impact on technical BPM capabilities (i.e. comprised of strategic alignment and IT infrastructure), which in turn drives an organisation's ability to enhance its performance. Using data from matched surveys of 182 organisations, we find that technical capabilities mediate the relationship between managerial capabilities and organisations' performance. Furthermore, we reveal that organisation culture moderates the relationship between managerial and technical capabilities. This paper contributes to the theory of BPM by showing that it can be separated into managerial and technical capabilities, and this forms the essential governance model for delivering superior performance.

Keywords:

• BPM capabilities
• organisation performance
• BPM governance
• organisation culture

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the Research Creativity and Management Office at Universiti Sains Malaysia for supporting the study through the USM RU Grant (Account No: 1001/PMGT/816191).