On the Role of Context in Business Process Management

Summary

Vom Brocke, Zelt & Schmiedel (2016) is a viewpoint article in International Journal of Information Management arguing that BPM project failures stem from applying a BPM body of knowledge originally built for structured, transactional, automation-focused processes to a growing diversity of business contexts (creative work, knowledge-intensive processes, innovation-driven initiatives, inter-organizational supply chains). The authors ground their argument in contingency theory (Donaldson 2001; Thompson 1967) and synthesise literature on context-aware process design, BPM success factors, process standardization, and knowledge-intensive process management to derive an integrated morphological-box framework of contextual factors for BPM.

The framework's novelty is twofold: (1) it treats context as both external and internal to BPM — prior work mostly examined only external/environmental factors — and (2) it covers BPM in general rather than any single BPM sub-area (e.g., modelling, monitoring). The resulting 4-dimension / 14-factor scheme (the BPM Context Framework, see frameworks/bpm-context-framework) is intended to be applied during the planning phase of a BPM project so that management practices can be tailored to the situation.

To illustrate, the paper walks through three hypothetical contexts (Table 2) and derives differentiated BPM recommendations:

Goal as trigger — example A (exploit) calls for process analysis, redesign, standardized data structures, ERP harmonization; example C (explore) calls for creative methods like design thinking despite similar process characteristics.
Process characteristics as trigger — example B (knowledge-intensive core process) needs stakeholder participation, flexibility, knowledge management systems, customer-adoption KPIs; example C (repetitive support process) tolerates low flexibility and efficiency-oriented KPIs.
Organizational characteristics as trigger — example A must invest in culture change (non-supportive starting culture) whereas example C can skip this; examples A and C require heavy formalization due to size, example B tolerates less.
Environment as trigger — example C's high uncertainty demands flexible roles and authorization; example B's high competitiveness demands customer co-design.

The paper is explicit about limitations: many factors are imported from adjacent fields (TQM, organizational design) and await BPM-specific empirical validation; factor interdependencies (e.g., size → resources; industry → process/org characteristics) are not modelled. A five-item future-research agenda calls for validation studies, context-sensitive management practices (including context-sensitive maturity models), factor-relationship studies, longitudinal case studies, and measurement tooling.

Key distinctions from the 2021 CAMAS recap

The 2016 paper presents the factors on a three-level ordinal scale (low/medium/high, or three process-type values) — the morphological box. The 2021 CAMAS paper collapses this to a binary scale (Christenfeld 1995) to reduce rater subjectivity — the ternary original is the richer form.
The 2016 paper is a viewpoint / conceptual piece; the 14 factors were not empirically validated in this paper. Validation was explicitly deferred to future research.
The paper emphasises that contexts change over time (resources, competitiveness, culture) so BPM requires continuous context monitoring — this dynamic view is less prominent in the CAMAS framing.
The three illustrative examples (A, B, C) provide decision-tree-style guidance mapping concrete factor patterns to concrete BPM method choices (ERP harmonization vs. design thinking vs. flexible roles) — this practical grounding sits underneath CAMAS's later formalisation.
Davenport's (2015) knowledge-work typology is cited for the process-characteristics dimension (collaborative/complex vs. routine work).

Connections

Operationalised and extended by sources/2021-vombrocke-context-aware-bpm-camas (CAMAS) — that paper uses this framework as the context meta-model.
Framework page: frameworks/bpm-context-framework.
Concept page: concepts/context-aware-bpm.
Authors: entities/jan-vom-brocke, entities/theresa-schmiedel. Sabine Zelt (co-author) — University of Liechtenstein researcher, not a broad BPM figure; no entity page.
Related theoretical lineage: contingency theory (Donaldson 2001, Thompson 1967, Zeithaml et al. 1988), Benner & Tushman (2003) exploration/exploitation — (referenced-not-ingested).
Related BPM references cited: Rosemann & vom Brocke (2015) BPM Handbook, vom Brocke et al. (2014) Ten Principles of Good BPM, Schmiedel et al. (2013, 2014) BPM culture, Davenport (2015) knowledge-work processes.