Surveys in business process management – a literature review

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to conduct a literature review to provide an overview of surveys focussing on business process management (BPM)/business process orientation (BPO) or on BPM-related topics in order to describe the status quo, uncover trends, classify survey contributions and assess the possible further development of survey research. Design/methodology/approach – In order to achieve the research goals, the authors conduct a literature review. The authors analyze the retrieved literature by means of a developed analysis framework which allows the authors to examine the surveys from the meta-perspective and content-based perspective. Findings – A lot of surveys focussing on BPM/BPO or on BPM-related topics have been published in German- and English-speaking literature over the last years. Nevertheless, the authors find out that while some topics, countries/regions and industries are well explored others were neglected in the past. Moreover, the authors provide first evidence that companies have a different BPM demand. Finally, the authors conclude that although the implications of the incorporated surveys provide a good starting point for practitioners they seem to be too abstract to be helpful for them. Thus, the authors recommend the conduction of qualitative research endeavors to develop adaptable theories for practitioners. Research limitations/implications – This literature review focusses on survey research in BPM. It could be repeated in order to verify the findings and moreover to track progress. However, although the authors followed the steps proposed for a literature review, the selection of relevant articles might be a limitation of this paper. Originality/value – The literature review provides an overview of surveys focussing on BPM/BPO or on BPM-related topics that have been published so far. The developed and strictly applied analysis framework supports a systematic analysis of survey research and could therefore provide a detailed picture of the current state of this research field. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no comparable literature review has been undertaken until now.