Designing a model for "Business process orientation" using interpretive structural modeling approach (ISM)
In today's business world, organizations are continually striving to streamline their operations, increase their ability to respond to the market conditions and find new opportunities to differentiate themselves from their competitors; these conditions have caused them to focus more on business process and customer. There is extensive literature regarding the focus on business process and process orientation in organizations. Most researchers have just discussed one of the dimensions of process orientation, but they have not suggested a comprehensive and integrated model indicating all the dimensions and indicators of business process and the interactions and interconnectedness among them. This paper reviews the literature related to business processes to identify the dimensions and indicators of business process and then employs an advanced methodology called Interpretive Structural Modeling to design an integrated business process orientation (BPO) model through which the dimensions and indicators of process orientation can be identified and analyzed. The results indicate that the comprehensive model of business process orientation includes six interactive and interconnected dimensions: process structure, process view and beliefs, process framework, management and performance measurement, operations strategic objective, and business process productivity. Reachability matrix, driver power dependence matrix and collaboration diagram show that process belief and attitude is the key dimension affecting other dimensions. On the other hand, process productivity has the highest level of dependency on other dimensions and functions as an output for business process orientation modeling. Key words: Process orientation, interpretive structural modeling, driver power dependence matrix, calibration diagram.