Exploring potentials of digital nudging for business processes

Titelangaben

Bammert, Sandra ; König, Ulrich Matthias ; Röglinger, Maximilian ; Wruck, Tabitha:
Exploring potentials of digital nudging for business processes.
In: Business Process Management Journal. Bd. 26 (2020) Heft 6 . - S. 1329-1347.
ISSN 1463-7154
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/BPMJ-07-2019-0281

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Abstract

Purpose - Business process improvement is vital for organizations as business environments are becoming ever more volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. Process improvement methods help organizations sustain com-petitiveness. Many existing methods, however, do not fit emerging business environments as they entail initiatives with long implementation times, high investments, and limited involvement of process participants. What is needed are agile process improvement approaches. The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential of digital nudging – a concept offering tools that lead individuals to better decisions – to improve business processes.
Design/methodology/approach - Using process deviance as theoretical lens, an online experiment with 473 par-ticipants is conducted. Within the experiment, business processes and digital nudges are implemented to examine whether digital nudging can mitigate the weaknesses of existing process improvement methods.
Findings - Digital nudging can influence the decisions of process participants and entail positive process deviance that leads to process improvement opportunities. Further, our research gives a first hint on the effectiveness of different digital nudges and lays the foundation for future research.
Research limitations/implications - Since exploring a completely new field of research and conducting the ex-periment in a synthetic environment, the paper serves as a first step towards the combination of digital nudging, business process improvement, and positive process deviance.
Originality/value - The major achievement reported in this paper is the exploration of a new field of research. Thus, digital nudging shapes up as a promising foundation for agile process improvement, a discovery calling for future research at the intersection of digital nudging and business process management.