A structured evaluation of business process improvement approaches

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a structured overview of so‐called business process improvement (BPI) approaches and their contribution to the actual act of improving. Even though a lot is said about BPI, there is still a lack of supporting the act of improving the process. Most approaches concentrate on what needs to be done before and after the improvement act, but the act of improving itself still seems to be a black box. Design/methodology/approach – This paper is mainly based on a review of literature that deals with the term “Business Process Improvement”. The analysis of the literature is supported by qualitative content analysis. The structure of the evaluation follows the mandatory elements of a method (MEM). Findings – A lot of literature and consulting approaches deal with the restructuring and improvement of business processes. The author finds that even so‐called BPI approaches do not describe the act of improvement itself. And if they do, they lack a methodological structure that can be reused. Research limitations/implications – To constrain the complexity of this research at this first stage of investigation only the search criterion “business process improvement” was used in the database search (EBSCO and Emerald). Originality/value – The paper is valuable for academics and practitioners because the impact of BPI on organizational performance is high. Its originality is in the structured evaluation of so‐called BPI approaches according to the MEM, which so far no one has investigated.