Towards a Theoretical Framework of Business Process Management through the Lens of Absorptive Capacity and Cognitive Dissonance Theory

Even after years of improving the methodologies for organizational change in general and business process management (‘BPM’) in particular, BPM programs are still often unsuccessful. We argue that this is not due to the deficiencies in methodologies or the lack of skills of people implementing them, but due to the lack of a deeper theory-based understanding of what each phase of the BPM implementation needs to achieve. We introduce a combination of cognitive dissonance and absorptive capacity theories to show how the resolution of cognitive dissonance should be used to increase the absorptive capacity. As a consequence, the organization has increased chances of BPM leading to financial benefits in the long run.

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