Towards a Measurement Instrument for Assessing Capabilities When Innovating Less-Structured Business Processes

Many contemporary organizations deal with different types of business processes, including less-structured business processes (LSBP). The latter are characterized by more unpredictable situations, ad-hoc tasks, limited process details, and a stronger emphasis on the human aspects as compared to the more structured business processes (SBP). However, existing BPM approaches often encounter challenges when driving innovation within organizations that have LSBP characteristics. To address this issue, organizations still lack a measurement tool to assess their process innovation capability (PIC) that is tailored towards LSBP (as opposed to generic BPM measurement instruments). Our study fills this gap by gradually building and testing a PIC-LSBP measurement instrument. We rely on empirical data from an international Delphi study, followed by a demonstration in two real-life organizations (i.e., one manufacturing organization in Asia and one service organization in Europe). The study aims at showing the practical application of the uncovered measurement instrument, seeking to identify and effectively address process innovation in more dynamic and complex business environments. The resulting instrument consists of six main capability areas, 18 sub-areas, and 55 formative measurement items. The findings highlight the significance of leveraging an instrument as a means to assess an organization’s current innovation capability with respect to a specific process type. Based on this insight, our research contributes to a broader understanding of how organizations can assess their existing process situation and derive action plans.