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Utilizing Business Process Management (BPM) for Performance Improvement: A Case Study of an Express
Company in Taiwan

quality management (TQM), business process reengineering (BPR), and information
technology (IT) (Harmon, 2010; Jeston and Nelis, 2008; Jurisch, Palka, Wolf, and
Krcmar, 2014; Roeser and Kern, 2015). Similar to business processes, various meanings
of BPM exist in the literature. In this subsection, to better understand BPM, we review its

definition, trace its origins, and check its current development in the academic fields.

2.2.1 Definition of BPM

BPM has been defined differently in the literature (Roeser and Kern, 2015); evidently,
it means different things to different people (Buh, Kovačič, and Indihar Štemberger,
2015). For example, it may be considered a management discipline (van der Aalst, 2013;
Association of Business Process Management Professionals, 2013), or a combination of
tools, and even a discipline itself (Hung, 2006; Palmberg, 2009). In this paper, we define

BPM as a set of tools and also a discipline that aims to improve the business process and
integrate components of an entire organization in a permanent and continuous manner
(Association of Business Process Management Professionals, 2013; Palmberg, 2009).

This definition captures the main characteristics of BPM that also appear among different
research, namely continuous improvement and a set of tools and a discipline.

2.2.2 Origins of BPM
According to Harmon (2010), a consensus has been reached that the concept of BPM

originated from the fields of TQM, BPR, and IT.
TQM aims to improve existing business processes by eliminating waste and
automating non-value-added actions on a continuous basis. This approach has its

limitations (Hammer, 1990, 2010). Hammer (2002) notes that “no matter how hard people
work, they cannot exceed the capability of the process as it has been designed. Continuous
improvement requires an improved design.” In such circumstances, the fundamental
problem lies in the faulty design of the process (Hammer, 2010). In response to this
problem, the concept of BPR arises in the 1990s (Davenport and Short, 1990; Hammer,

1990; Hammer and Champy, 1993). BPR proponents posit that companies must break from
old approaches of doing business so that they can fit into a rapidly changing environment
(Hammer, 1990). However, although Hammer (1990) and Davenport and Short (1990)

both provide successful practices in their articles, Champy (1995) discovers that 70% of

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