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NTU Management Review Vol. 35 No. 1 Apr. 2025

2. Literature Review

According to Cao, Deng, and Liu (2023) and Trkman (2010), the logistics industry’s
development faces significant risks, as organizations navigate a rapidly changing and fast-

paced business environment that drives a growing focus on improving business processes
to enhance performance. This section traces and illustrates what BPM is, its current status
in academia and in practice, and attempts to understand how organizations implement
BPM. Specifically, we review different stages in different BPM life cycle models.

2.1 Business Processes
Business processes are defined heterogeneously throughout the literature, with no
single definition being widely used in this field (Palmberg, 2009). Deming, whose studies

led to the modern quality movement, defines process as “essentially any sequence of
work activities” (Deming, 1953; Hammer, 2010). Rummler and Brache (1995) consider
a business process to be “a series of steps designed to produce a product or service.”
Hammer, the pioneer of business process reengineering, defines a business process as

“an organized group of related activities that work together to create a result of value to
customers (Hammer, 2002).”
In 2009, Palmberg conducts a large-scale review of the definition of a business
process. He selects and analyzes seventy-seven articles. He finds that although every

author defines business process in their own words, in almost every definition, six
components reappear, namely: (1) input and output; (2) interrelated activities; (3) intra-
functional or cross-functional; (4) purpose or value for customers; (5) resource use; (6)
repeatability. With these six components, he provides a condensed definition of a business

process as “a horizontal sequence of activities that transforms an input (need) to an output
(result) to meet the needs of customers or stakeholders (Palmberg, 2009).” For the purpose
of this research, we choose Palmberg’s definition because he mentions that the process
provides value to the “internal customer.”

2.2 BPM
BPM is a method of managing horizontal sequences of activities within an
organization. It is widely accepted that BPM has its roots in three academic fields: total

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