Digital Nudging in Business Process Management

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Type and Duration

FFF-Förderprojekt, November 2021 until December 2023 (finished)

Coordinator

Hilti Chair of Business Process Management

Main Research

Business Process Management

Description

Processes are ubiquitous - they permeate all areas of life. Businesses are organized through processes, novel innovations are created through processes and a panoply of other aspects in people's daily lives evolve in processes. Hence, it has become increasingly important to find appropriate ways of studying, describing and improving processes throughout various fields. Business Process Management (BPM) is a research field that deals with the management, implementation, analysis and design of business processes. An important part of BPM also deals with changing and improving business processes. In the majority of prior research this change has been inspected from a holistic or organizational point of view. However, since the behavior of the individuals involved in the business processes often influences its outcomes, it is necessary to take an individual-level perspective on BPM. Directly guiding and changing the behavior of process participants on an individual level offers auspicious opportunities to positively affect decision-making and facilitate agile process improvement. Therefore, the present research project takes such an individual-level perspective on BPM by using the lens of digital nudging. Digital nudging is described as "the use of user-interface design elements to guide people's behavior in digital choice environments" (Weinmann, Schneider, & vom Brocke, 2016, p. 433). Since the intersection of digital nudging and BPM is yet to be thoroughly explored, this research project aims to contribute to the discourse by exploring the role of digital nudging in BPM. By doing so, this research project has the objective to provide meaningful contributions to the knowledge base in the research areas of information systems, BPM as well as digital nudging. It also has the potential to offer notable practical contributions that can make an impact in the real world by guiding people's behavior for process improvement.

keywords: Business Process Management, Digital nudging, process behavior, individual level, business process design

Reference to Liechtenstein

Since everything in organizations and also in life unfolds in processes and processes are everywhere, they are of paramount importance in all kinds of decision environments. Bringing the perspective of digital nudging into BPM is valuable, because nudging happens, consciously or unconsciously, in any way a processes presents itself to its process participants. Therefore, it is important for companies to understand how and why process participants are affected by choice design. Regional companies can benefit from new insights in state-of-the-art BPM research by implementing it into their own process management. Moreover, a better understanding of BPM has a panoply of benefits for local organizations such as improved process performance, increased sustainability and many more.

Publications

  • Franzoi, S., & vom Brocke, J. (2022). Sustainability by Default? Nudging Carbon Offsetting Behavior in E-Commerce. Paper presented at the 30th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS), Timisoara, Romania. (VHB_3: B)

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