Stakeholder Involvement in Business Process Management Agenda-Setting and Implementation

Process management serves the design of IT and organizations, while multiple actors have stakes in setting the agenda and implementing process innovations. These stakeholders, from both inside and outside an organization‟s boundaries, constitute integral elements of a larger network of actors. The stimulation and utilization of such networks are critical success factors for process management and innovation initiatives. Without the inclusion of stakeholders, adaption of organizational processes to a dynamic environment can be expected to be less effective and less successful. Although the importance of process management networks and stakeholder inclusion is widely acknowledged in the literature, current research lacks a thorough empirically informed understanding of the phenomenon. Taking the public sector example, this paper sets out to study empirically the involvement of different stakeholders and to develop a theory for analysis of process management collaboration. We conduct a comprehensive quantitative survey of more than 350 organizations and apply principle component analysis to identify distinct sets of stakeholders. Empirical evidence is provided for collaborative patterns of internal actors, vertical collaboration partners, horizontal collaboration partners, political actors, commercial actors, and customers. These patterns can serve as generic theory constructs, building blocks, for future research on process management stakeholders and solving issue in research and practice regarding stakeholder involvement.