Foundations and Future Prospects of Standards Studies: Multidisciplinary Approach

In this chapter three research models around BPS are derived in subsections 3.1 to 3.3. These research models shed light on the consequences/value dimensions of BPS (i.e. analyze the impact of BPS on business process performance and its sub-dimensions time, cost, and quality, as well as on business process flexibility).1 In a first step, the chapter introduces the three research models which are used and evaluated throughout the remainder of this book. In a second step, the chapter introduces the individual constructs used in the three research models. Finally, Section 3 establishes links between the constructs and derives a set of research hypotheses per model.2 The use of models does not necessarily lead to good policies, but it does avoid the worst possibilities. (Arrow, 2004) 1 OVERVIEW AND DEVELOPMENT OF MODELS In this section we will introduce the three research models (compare Figure 1) on which the main part of this book will focus. As discussed in section 3.1 within this book we focus on analyzing business process standards and business process standardization within the boundaries of a preselected focal organization. Building upon the IT business value model developed by Melville et al. (2004), we derived our BPS value model. By specifically zooming in on the link from “business processes” to “consequences/value dimensions of BPS” we aim at analyzing the BPS value creation on selected consequences/value dimensions (e.g. business process performance or business process flexibility) on process level, because recent research promotes a process-level perspective (compare section 2.2). In the following the three models will be developed, starting with an overview of the model (this section), followed by collecting the constructs into the model (section 2), and finally theoretically deriving and adding the hypothesized linkages between the introduced constructs into the models (section 3). Björn Münstermann University of Bamberg, Germany