Understanding the Inflexibility of Process Integration

The objective of this study is to establish a base for understanding inflexibility, with different kinds of integration problems being examined and explained. Studies of process integration have focused mostly on the design and management of efficient operation with information technology but very little on the difficulty in making changes with tightly linked processes. In order to eliminate risks of integration failure, there is a need for deep understanding of the types and causes of inflexibility with process integration. Based on the literature and reported cases of process integration and enterprise flexibility/inflexibility, this study proposes that inflexibility can be classified as either operational, organizational, or systems inflexibility. The incompleteness of business design and the misalignment of users’ and system designers’ capability seem to be key sources of inflexibility. Though the propositions are to be further tested, the proposed framework with different categories of inflexibility and different sources for inflexibility provides a reference for planning effective management of process integration.