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1 Introduction
Business process management (BPM) has been an intensely discussed topic in the information systems (IS) research field as well as in practice since the late 1980s. Although earlier works have discussed the idea of process orientation ([24] Nordsieck, 1934), they did not lead to a comprehensive realization of identified potentials. Later on the contributions of [28] Porter (1985), [8] Davenport (1993), [13] Hammer and Champy (1993) and [30] Scheer (1994) have had a considerable impact on the following research and the practical application of provided concepts.
Meanwhile BPM has reached a certain maturity. The amount of literature concerning BPM, the existence of specialized journals (e.g. the Business Process Management Journal ) and conferences (e.g. the BPM-Conference in the seventh year) as well as the institutionalization of degree programs specialized in BPM at several universities evidence that it is not a temporary fashion but an evolving trend in management science. Furthermore, an increase of practical application of the concept can be stated by the actual development of the business process management systems market and its expected growth in the future ([18] Ko et al. , 2009).
In the context of the application of BPM methods a certain amount of experience has been produced and documented in empirical research contributions. As empirical contributions support BPM research in the context of theory construction as well as in the context of reviewing success of designed artefacts it builds an important part in the development process of BPM in general. The importance of empirical research is also stressed by the fact that the first workshop for empirical research in BPM (ER-BPM) has been offered at the BPM conference 2009.
The analysis of empirical work in BPM which is conducted in this paper can identify well-studied fields and research gaps, applied methods and further interesting evidence concerning empirical BPM research. Thus, it can make an interesting contribution to the further development of BPM research.
There is a number of articles providing a literature review in the context of BPM research. These articles differ from this contribution in regard to substantial characteristics. The works of [37] Zairi and Sinclair (1995) and [19] Lee and Dale (1998) review BPM literature with a focus on conceptual contributions.
The works of [25] O'Neill...