The Correlation of Organizational Culture and Success of BPM Adoption

Organizational culture has been described as one of the most important factors in BPM adoption, as it is reported to support or hinder BPM efforts in an organization. However, this proposition is still hardly backed up with empirical research. The aim of this paper is to provide a better understanding of the contingent role that organizational culture can play for the success of BPM adoption. To this end, we use a survey design for evaluating the correlation of organizational culture and the success of BPM adoption. Our survey was distributed among top managers and (where applicable) process owners in organizations with more than 50 employees in Slovenia. The results reveal that the highest level of BPM adoption success is achieved in organizations with Clan culture type, whereas organizations achieving the lowest level of BPM adoption success appear to have a Hierarchy culture, as measured by the culture classification of Cameron and Quinn (2006). A significantly negative correlation has been found between Hierarchy culture type and all aspects of BPM adoption success. These insights provide a foundation for further studying on how organizational culture affects BPM adoption success in detail.