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1 Introduction
Many researchers have described the expectations and objectives that are associated with organizations' adoption of business process management (BPM) in organizations. BPM is considered an important approach to the management of organizations since, to a large extent, organizational performance is built into its business processes ([3] Balasubramanian and Gupta, 2005, p. 680). Once an organization has committed to adopting BPM, decision makers need accurate process performance data and metrics to make the right decisions about their processes ([19] Harmon, 2011). Managers need to understand how, where, and when a business process creates economic value in order to decide which processes should be redesigned, improved, or eliminated. In particular, managers need to know "what is the contribution of business processes" ([57] Yen, 2009, p. 866) in order to coordinate their BPM activities properly. Therefore, what is required in BPM are means by which to account for the creation of economic values in a process context.
The importance of accounting information in grounding BPM decisions notwithstanding, BPM researchers and practitioners have pointed out that decision making in BPM lacks an economic perspective ([51] vom Brocke, 2007; [53] vom Brocke et al. , 2010; [5] Buhl et al. , 2011) stemming primarily from the absence of relevant, process-oriented accounting information in the context of planning, designing, and controlling business processes ([19] Harmon, 2011; [32] Müller-Wickop et al. , 2013).
Process-aware information systems (PAIS) ([10] Dumas et al. , 2005), as main facilitators of BPM initiatives and central information sources for process managers, cannot readily provide relevant accounting data for decision support since, in many cases, PAIS are not well-integrated with an organization's accounting information systems (AIS) ([55] vom Brocke et al. , 2011). The lack of process-related accounting data in PAIS is assumed to cause several dysfunctional effects in BPM decision making:
- Existing methods for operational decision support in BPM are focused on technical and structural criteria. [55] vom Brocke et al. (2011), such as soundness of process specifications, process lead times, and the quality of process output. While PAIS account for such information, the economic consequences of letting processes (fail to) comply with these criteria cannot be disclosed or traced by contemporary PAIS.
- Costs are the only accounting artefact frequently considered in BPM.