Towards a framework for identifying business process redesign patterns

Purpose – Business process redesign (BPR) is still a big issue in improving organizations and a lot of methods and techniques exist to support this undertaking. Referring to this, the purpose of this paper is to derive a framework for identifying patterns in BPR that help in discovering new mechanisms which are indispensable to redesign and improve business processes. Design/methodology/approach – The first part of this research process follows the principles of design science research by deriving the framework as an artifact. The second part focuses on the justification (“Justify/Evaluate”) of the framework using a literature review and a laboratory experiment. Findings – A framework for identifying BPR pattern is derived and in parts validated by literature that helps to support the act of improving business processes. The advantages of this approach lie in the integrity of deriving possible patterns and the fact that it is not limited (as attempts in related work suffered from). The practical implications and added value of the (selected) patterns could be validated by conducting a laboratory experiment. Research limitations/implications – The justification of the framework is based on a narrow literature review, just to show that this framework is applicable. For a more detailed evaluation a broader literature review is needed. The laboratory experiment was conducted for four patterns only. This also needs to be expanded in further research. Practical implications – The paper is valuable for academics and practitioners because the impact of BPR on organizational performance is high. Using the identified BPR pattern facilitates the redesign of business processes, as shown in the experiment. Originality/value – The originality of the paper lies in the possibility to easily identify BPR pattern to support the redesign of existing business processes.