A critical pre-requisite to delivering social good through the design of digital solutions is a deep and nuanced understanding of the problem space-beyond awareness, framing or problematization. This "problem of the problem" is particularly acute for wicked psychosocial problems (a subclass of wicked problems) that are characterized by stigma, emotional vulnerability, identity threats, and sensitive disclosure dynamics. In this paper, we develop a set of principles for effective problem space exploration (PSE) for this class of problems. Our work relies on cross-case analysis of PSE journeys for two design science research (DSR) efforts aimed at specific problems in this class: young adults experiencing social anxiety disorder, and older adults facing loneliness. We validate the principles with a retrospective analysis of prior DSR efforts and a structured evaluation from experts to assess their potential applicability. Our work contributes a set of PSE principles for wicked psychosocial problems that are empirically grounded and validated with expert feedback-adding to contemporary discussion of PSE in DSR.

Evaluation is a key part of Design Science Research (DSR). Evaluations can take place in artificial or naturalistic environments, which may be chosen, depending on the type of artifact being developed, and each with their own advantages and disadvantages. With the advent of Industry 5.0, naturalistic evaluations will be more in demand, however these can be difficult, time-consuming and expensive. This study outlines the use of the Critical Incident Technique (CIT) as a useful way to obtain many of the benefits of naturalistic evaluation, such as verisimilitude, and other benefits such as the ability to evaluate in a broader range of settings and improved engagement of participants in the evaluation process. An illustration of the use of this technique is provided, demonstrating how CIT can be a valuable addition to the DSR researcher’s toolbox.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) continues to be a key mechanism for driving process improvement. However, increased technology use and complexity are known to increase occurrences of technostress for employees. Technostress has two sides: techno-distress causing negative outcomes such as burnout and decreased productivity, while techno-eustress increases motivation, generating superior process outcomes. Efforts by managers to address technostress may be ineffective if they lack insight into which employees are affected and the specific nature of the stress experienced. The existence of both positive and negative forms of technostress in the context of RPA remains largely unexplored. This early exploratory study examines how technostress manifests in RPA, identifying positive and negative effects on human and digital agents such as bots. These findings inform targeted technostress mitigation strategies to maximise the benefits of RPA in process improvement. A systematic review of qualitative data, using an agentic lens on participation and a spectrum view of technostress, revealed both techno-eustress and techno-distress, the light and dark sides of technostress in the RPA environment. End-users and developers reported positive effect (techno-enrichment, techno-mastery) but also faced challenges: notably techno-insecurity, techno-complexity, and techno-overload. Cyber-physical technostress was identified was identified in relation to RPA bots, especially techno-complexity when environmental inconsistencies disrupted their performance. These findings inform targeted technostress mitigation strategies, including early communication of RPA implementation intent, ongoing stakeholder training, and celebrating successes. These measures aim to effectively support employees effectively and enhance the overall benefits of RPA in achieving business process improvement.

As organizations confront increasing expectations for responsible practices, embedding benevolence into business operations has become both an ethical intent and a pathway to sustained success. Routinized Benevolence (RB) refers to voluntary actions embedded into routine operations of for-profit organizations to enhance customer well-being while pursuing mutualistic gains. Although evidence of RB is observable in practice and closely aligns with the principles of Responsible BPM, its conceptual underpinnings and operational mechanisms remain underdeveloped. Addressing this gap, we introduce the RB Canvas, a structured design artefact that captures key elements of RB, including its drivers, action patterns, characteristics, impacts, and risks. Developed using a Design Science Research approach and grounded in empirical case evidence, the canvas serves as both a conceptual framework and a practical tool to support implementation. This study contributes to the emerging agenda of Responsible BPM by offering a systematic approach to understanding and enabling benevolence within business processes.

Process automation has been a cornerstone of organisational success, driving competitiveness through enhanced effectiveness and efficiency. While automation remains a key focus, the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and the Internet of Things (IoT) provides entirely new process design options and as such demands new skills and approaches in Business Process Management (BPM) to maintain relevance and competitiveness. This paper extends current BPM paradigms by introducing the concept of “process autonomisation,” a new paradigm that empowers organisations to make decisions autonomously using real-time data and adaptive business contexts. By critically examining existing BPM methodologies and highlighting key innovations, we propose strategies for evolving process management frameworks - emphasising agility, data-driven decision-making, and seamless digital integration. To thrive in the digital age, we argue, organisations must rethink their BPM practices. We call on both academic and industry stakeholders to collaborate on pioneering advancements in BPM and co-develop a roadmap that will help organisations align their process management with the ongoing digital transformation reshaping industries.

Business Process Management (BPM) plays a critical role by driving digital innovation and enhancing organizational agility. Due to its importance in information systems (IS), educational institutions worldwide offer diverse BPM courses. However, a notable gap remains in teaching resources that offer real-world cases with a strong focus on diverse organizational contexts. This teaching case fills this gap by presenting the employees' performance management process of a small-to-medium enterprise (SME) in a developing nation. The case offers a unique perspective in BPM by illuminating its interplay with contextual complexities in the SME environment. The case highlights an underexplored area on BPM-the critical role of effectively integrating and managing employees' performance within operational workflows-by bridging theory with practice and fostering digital-oriented problem-solving skills. The case is designed with student tasks centered around a structured process lifecycle approach, utilizing real-life process data and supported by comprehensive teaching materials. It is practical, engaging, userfriendly, and adaptable across diverse learning environments, making it a valuable resource in BPM education. This case enables educators to effectively teach complex BPM topics while fostering practical skills in students.

In response to growing expectations for human-centered, yet profitable business practices, organizations are beginning to embed genuine, customer-focused benevolent actions into everyday operations - a practice we term as routinized benevolence. Routinized benevolence represents a shift beyond traditional efficiency-driven business processes. Despite its potential, its adoption remains cautious due to limited understanding on how it generates impacts. This paper aims to advance the knowledge of the effects of routinized benevolence, proposing it as a vital extension to conventional BPM performance objectives and exploring its practical implications for organizations. Building upon existing literature, this paper introduces a conceptual model that links benevolent business processes with tangible business outcomes. The model outlines a multi-stage process in which benevolent actions first elicit positive emotional responses (stage 1), then strengthen customer relationships (stage 2), and ultimately contribute to long-term business success (stage 3). This conceptual model lays the groundwork for both academic research and practical implementation, suggesting that benevolent business processes are not merely an ethical ideal but a strategic driver of sustainable organizational success.

Maturity models (MMs) are an important Information Systems artefact with grounding in multidisciplinary theory and significant impact in practice. However, despite a four-decades development history, hundreds of maturity models and the high impact on practice, this type of artefact is still under-explored in terms of the role as an artefact bridging academic and professional communities. Therefore, and based on a theory-development approach, our paper positions MMs as a value-adding boundary object providing recommendations for how the Information Systems community could further capitalize on MMs. We extend existing MM conceptualization with ten design principles across three knowledge boundary levels that span different stakeholder groups. These levels cover an information processing level (i.e., MM's structure), an interpretive level (i.e., MM's flexibility) and a pragmatic level (i.e., MM's legitimacy). Finally, we discuss how and why MMs can be used to further span intra- and inter-organizational boundaries.

Process mining—a suite of techniques for extracting insights from event logs of Information Systems (IS)—is increasingly being used by a wide range of organisations to improve operational efficiency. Despite extensive studies of Critical Success Factors (CSFs) in related domains, CSF studies tailored to process mining are limited. Moreover, these studies merely identify factors and do not provide essential details such as a clear conceptual understanding of success factors and their interrelationships. Through a multi-phased approach (applying published process mining case studies, conducting two in-depth case studies and expert interviews), this paper presents an empirically validated process mining CSF model and CSF interrelationships. This validated CSF model identifies ten process mining CSFs, explains how these factors relate to the process mining context and analyses their interrelationships with regard to process mining success. The findings provide a guide for organisations to invest in the right mix of CSFs for value realisation in process mining practice.

A good literature review that effectively synthesises current knowledge can contribute to the cumulative knowledge growth and advancement of a field. This tutorial-paper complements the existing methodological guidelines, with a particular focus on the 'literature review protocol'- which can significantly improve the quality, efficiency, and impact of a literature review endeavour. In this paper, we describe what a 'literature review protocol' is, discuss its major components, and provide essential design guidelines. In particular, we provide a comprehensive toolkit with step-by-step instructions, templates, and illustrative examples that users may adapt to their own projects. This information is appropriate for novice and expert researchers conducting a literature review for publication purposes, and also for reviewers or editors who assess literature review papers. It is also beneficial for educators engaged in research trainings.

The academic and professional BPM discipline is concentrated on process performance and conformance. However, changing consumer demand patterns, ESG requirements and concepts such as conscious capital have increased the pressure to create more than 'transactional value' from business processes. One such consequence is the requirement to provide trusted processes and the embedded request for benevolence. A benevolent process prioritizes customers' demands over providers' interests. Following a Design Science approach and informed by primary data collected from three large service organisations and related secondary data, this paper presents eight design guidelines, grouped in four pairs, for benevolent processes. These design guidelines conceptualise an entirely new set of process aims and have the potential to initiate BPM research and professional practice exceeding common transactional value propositions.

Purpose Process mining (PM) specialises in extracting insights from event logs to facilitate the improvement of an organisation's business processes. Industry trends show the proliferation and continued growth of PM techniques. To address the minimal attention given to developing empirically supported frameworks to assess the nature of impact in the PM domain, this study proposes a framework that identifies the key categories of PM impacts and their interrelationships. Design/methodology/approach The qualitatively derived framework is built, re-specified and validated from a diverse collection of 62 PM case reports. With multiple rounds of coding supported by coder corroborations, inductively extracted concepts relating to impact from a first set of 12 case reports were grouped into themes and sub-themes to derive an a-priori framework by adopting the balanced scorecard as a theoretical lens. Concepts from the remaining 50 case reports were deductively grouped to re-specify and validate the proposed PM impacts framework. Further analysis identified interrelationships between impacts, which extends our understanding of the identified PM impacts. Findings The proposed framework captures PM impacts in four main categories: (a) impact on the process, (b) customer impact, (c) financial impact, and (d) impact on innovation and learning. The authors extended this analysis to identify the interrelationships between these categories, which vividly demonstrates how impact on the process mediates the attainment of the other three impact types. Originality/value The need for a deeper understanding of PM impacts within the context of contemporary PM practice is addressed by this work. The PM impacts framework provides a classification of PM impacts into four categories with 19 subcategories. It also identifies direct, moderating and mediating relationships between categories and subcategories whilst highlighting the role of impact on the process as a precursor to the other types of PM impact.

It may be tempting for researchers to stick to incremental extensions of their current work to plan future research activities. Yet there is also merit in realizing the grand challenges in one’s field. This paper presents an overview of the nine major research problems for the Business Process Management discipline. These challenges have been collected by an open call to the community, discussed and refined in a workshop setting, and described here in detail, including a motivation why these problems are worth investigating. This overview may serve the purpose of inspiring both novice and advanced scholars who are interested in the radical new ideas for the analysis, design, and management of work processes using information technology.

In the dynamic business environment of today, BPM professionals must adapt to cutting-edge technologies, evolving methodologies, and rapidly changing market conditions. Consequently, educational programmes should be sufficiently adaptable to incorporate emerging trends and equip learners with the technical dexterity and process thinking required to effectively lead organisational digital transformation. This adaptability ensures the continued relevance of BPM education and produces graduates that are capable of driving innovation and organisational success. The goal of this study is to share the key features and report on the key lessons learned from our experiences conducting BPM education programmes for over two decades. We argue for the holistic and flexible nature of BPM education by explaining how a variety of learner-focused technical and managerial factors influence our BPM education framework. We underline the necessity for a well-balanced BPM curriculum that covers both technical topics like process mining and automation and managerial topics like process governance and process strategic alignment. We show how industry and students’ needs may be balanced in the BPM curriculum to produce job-ready graduates. This study will contribute to the BPM education community's knowledge base by reporting on the critical dimensions of a programme design that encapsulate our shared experiences in delivering a holistic and flexible BPM curriculum to varied learners using different delivery channels. The details discussed will assist BPM experts in designing and delivering a comprehensive curriculum to tackle BPM programme design and its relevance to today's dynamic business environment.

Influenced by the global uptake of digital transformations, governments in developing countries are making considerable investments in digital transformation initiatives; however, these often result in very high failure rates. The overall purpose of this study is to identify why digital transformations in the public sector of developing country contexts fail. This paper reports on a rich revelatory case study of a Sri Lankan government agency that experienced digital transformation failure. Data was collected primarily via semi-structured interviews and augmented with document analysis that enabled us to derive deep insights into why digital transformations fail. We identified 23 failure factors which were grouped into 5 meta-themes, namely, Organisational, Implementing Agency, Cultural, Leadership and Macro-Level Factors, forming a failure factor model. The analysis also unveiled complex interrelationships between these themes/factors, which formed the basis for 6 evidence-supported propositions detailed in the paper. The findings will benefit public sector organizations in developing countries and their implementation partners to effectively plan their digital transformation strategies.