Emerging technologies have capabilities to reshape business process management (BPM) from its traditional version to a more explorative variant. However, to exploit the full benefits of new IT, it is essential to reveal BPM’s research potential and to detect recent trends in practice. Therefore, this work presents a systematic literature review (SLR) with 231 recent academic articles (from 2014 until May 2019) that integrate BPM with digital innovations (DI). We position those articles against seven future BPM-DI trends that were inductively derived from an expert panel. By complementing the expected trends in practice with a state-of-the-art literature review, we are able to derive covered and uncovered themes in order to help bridge a rigor-relevance gap. The major technological impacts within the BPM field seem to focus on value creation, customer engagement and managing human-centric and knowledge-intensive business processes. Finally, our findings are categorized into specific calls for research and for action to let scholars and organizations better prepare for future digital needs.

When emerging technologies transform an organization’s way of working, explorative business process management (BPM) becomes a new challenge. Although digital innovations can boost process efficacy and business productivity, employees do not necessarily accept the implied work changes. We therefore looked at the increased digitalization efforts during the COVID-19 lockdowns, during which employees were forced to drastically rethink work by heavily depending on technology for communication and almost all business tasks. This global setting allowed us to scrutinize disruptive work changes and how employees can cope with disruptive work adaptations. We also looked into the explorative skillset needed to adapt to these changes. To theorize about an explorative BPM acceptance model, eleven hypotheses were supported based on a solid theoretical foundation. We followed a quantitative research design using partial least squares for structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) at the university administration settings in two regions, including purposive sampling. Data analysis covered both a measurement model assessment and structural model assessment. Our findings reveal that employees’ perceived work modalities, feeling creative and feeling flexible are more promising features than perceived influence and attitude related to explorative work and skill development. We also offer novel insights into explorative business process management (BPM) skills, and which skills are more productive in uncertain or dynamic working conditions. This research is a learning path for managers struggling with flexible or competitive business environments, and more specifically to facilitate employee willingness.

Business Process Management (BPM) in the age of digitalization and globalization needs to become more innovative and creative. Information Technology (IT) helps to bring innovation in an organization’s business processes. Our research objective is to incorporate prior studies related to the co-evolution between BPM and IT in order to explore insights and innovation trends resulting from this IT integration in the BPM discipline. We position the sampled studies against three BPM frameworks (i.e. BPM life cycle components, BPM core elements, and BPM context factors) to better incorporate their historical link with (new) IT. A Systematic Literature Review (SLR) procedure was followed, resulting in 1,198 research papers for content analysis. The review output is summarized in a BPM-IT evolution chart and an extended BPM framework. The evolution chart confirms that Industry 4.0, Blockchains, Internet of Things (IoT) and Ambidextrous BPM are the most rising trends. We conclude by digging deeper into the novel themes for researchers, BPM consultants and managers.