Testimonials
“Many processes in organizations are routinized but nevertheless, change. This workshop has the potential to make a big step ahead in understanding how. An exciting opportunity not to be missed!”
(Markus Becker, University of Southern Denmark)
“I would challenge you to a battle of wits- so come prepared to challenge the process how processes change. If you want to be part of the process to understand process change you need to attend the workshop!”
(Kalle Lyytinen, Case Western University, United States)
“Routine dynamics and BPM look at many of the same phenomena from different points of view, so there are enormous opportunities for collaboration and learning. Don’t miss this workshop!”
(Brian Pentland, Michigan State University, United States)
Unique Contributions of this Workshop
- This workshop brings together different perspectives and research streams on change, drift, and dynamics of business processes
- This workshop reaches out to researchers from organization sciences and information systems to integrate both communities and to engage with the participants of the BPM Conference. Naturally, we also welcome submissions relating to classic BPM research on process drift, process change, process visualization, and process analytics
- There is a vibrant discourse on the dynamics of routines in information systems research, as exemplified by seminal works such as Leonardi (MISQ 2011) being cited more than 1,000 times
- This workshop plays a key role in building a bridge between diverse research communities that investigate process dynamics
While intended to remain stable when implemented, business processes change over time. This change is caused by and connected to various factors inside and outside the organization. Different descriptions of change phenomena have been discussed in the literature such as incremental or seasonal drift, endogenous and exogenous change, along with roadblocks and enablers for process change. Recent research investigates, among others, how we can detect drift in processes, how we can use process mining to make visualize change, how to theorize change in processes, and which methods can support the continuous (re-)design and adaptation of processes.
The aim of this workshop is to bring together different perspectives and research streams on change, drift, and dynamics of business processes and provide them a stage for mutual exchange. To facilitate this, we invite conceptual, technical, and empirical papers addressing various aspects that relate to process change in organizations. Related terms covered by recent BPM research and neighboring disciplines that we specifically welcome are process evolution, routine dynamics, exogenous and endogenous change, process drift detection, etc. We encourage submissions from different epistemologies and applying different research methods. We invite submissions from Business Process Management, but also from other connected research areas, such as Routine Dynamics, Information Systems, and Computer Science.
The workshop is planned as a half-day event and comprises the presentation of accepted papers. There will be two types of papers. First, regular papers will be published in the post-proceeding volume of Springer’s Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing (LNBIP) series. Selected papers will be invited to submit an enhanced version to the Business Process Management Department of Business & Information Systems Engineering (BISE). Second, we invite research-in-progress submissions for papers that cannot be published. Those submissions will be presented on the workshop day with the aim of fostering discussions among the workshop participants and providing feedback to the authors. Moreover, we plan a discussion session to outline future research directions and to motivate the joint research efforts of participants.
Submissions can address, but are not limited to, the following topics:
- What are novel techniques to detect and visualize drift in organizational processes?
- How do business processes or process-related aspects change over time?
- What method can we apply to study change in business processes?
- How can change in business processes be conceptually described and theorized?
- How do process change initiatives unfold and what are their effects?
- How can organizations manage intended and unintended process change?
- Which kind of unintended change in business processes exists, and how do they unfold?
- Which positive and negative consequences emerge from process change?
- How can techniques like process mining help to investigate process dynamics?
- How do specific technologies (e.g., robotic process automation, gen AI) trigger change in organizational processes?
Prospective authors are invited to submit papers for presentation in any of the workshop topics. Papers must not exceed 12 pages for full papers and 6 pages for research-in-progress papers. The formatting must comply with the LNBIP format (http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-791344-0). Papers have to present original research contributions not concurrently submitted elsewhere. The title page must contain a short abstract, a classification of the topics covered, preferably using the list of topics above, and an indication of the submission category (regular paper/position paper/tool report). All papers will undergo regular peer-review. The paper selection will be based upon the relevance of submitted papers to the main topics, as well as upon their quality and potential to generate relevant discussion at the workshop. Based on the reviews, we will have two types of papers/ presentations. First, we will have regular papers that will be published by Springer as a post-proceeding volume (to be sent around 4 months after the workshop) in their Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing (LNBIP) series. Second, we will invite submitted papers that cannot be published as idea talks with the aim to foster discussions among the workshop participants and provide feedback to the authors.
The workshop is planned as a half-day event and will comprise presentations of the accepted papers and research-in-progress papers, as well as discussion sessions involving researchers from different academic backgrounds in order to discuss complementary perspectives on process dynamics.
The workshop will be held in conjunction with the 23rd International Conference on Business Process Management (BPM 2025) hosted in Sevilla, Spain, from August 31st to September 5th, 2025.
Some References for Inspiration
vom Brocke, J., van der Aalst, W., Grisold, T., Kremser, W., Mendling, J., Pentland, B., … & Weber, B. (2021). Process science: the interdisciplinary study of continuous change. Available at SSRN 3916817.
Goh, K. T., & Pentland, B. T. 2019. From Actions to Paths to Patterning: Toward a Dynamic Theory of Patterning in Routines. Academy of Management Journal, 62(6): 1901–1992.
Maaradji, A., Dumas, M., Rosa, M. L., & Ostovar, A. (2016, September). Fast and accurate business process drift detection. In International Conference on Business Process Management (pp. 406-422). Springer, Cham.
Langley, A. N. N., Smallman, C., Tsoukas, H., & Van de Ven, A. H. (2013). Process studies of change in organization and management: Unveiling temporality, activity, and flow. Academy of Management Journal, 56(1), 1-13.
Mendling, J., Berente, N., Seidel, S., & Grisold, T. 2021. Pluralism and Pragmatism in the Information Systems Field: The Case of Research on Business Processes and Organizational Routines. The Data Base for Advances in Information Systems.
Pentland, B. T., Vaast, E., & Wolf, R. 2021. Theorizing process dynamics with directed graphs: A diachronic analysis of digital trace data. MIS Quarterly, 45(2): 967–984.
Wurm, B., Grisold, T., Mendling, J., & vom Brocke, J. 2021. Business Process Management and Routine Dynamics. Cambridge Handbook of Routine Dynamics. Cambridge University Press.