From Scientific Process Management to Process Science: Towards an Empirical Research Agenda for Business Process Management

Business Process Management (BPM) as a research field integrates di↵erent perspectives from the disciplines computer science, management science and information systems research. Its evolution has by been shaped by the corresponding conferences series, the International Conference on Business Process Management (BPM conference). As much as in other academic discipline, there is an ongoing debate that discusses the identity, the quality and maturity of the BPM field. In this paper, we will formulate recommendations to further develop BPM research based on the major findings a larger study by Recker and Mendling, which will be published in the Business & Information Systems Engineering journal in 2016. This recent study of the BPM field provides a good basis for discussing how BPM research can be further developed towards a true process science, which will eventually provide insights for practitioners on how to apply scientific process management.