The present article is supposed to describe the research design of the process management survey which was carried out by the Institute for General Management and Organization, Graz University of Technology, in summer 2008.
The study surveyed Austrian corporations operating in metal and machinery industry with at least 50 employees. Firms were selected randomly and for every firm one executive (CEO, CIO or quality manager) was interviewed. A total of 150 organizations were interviewed (sample size n=150). The average firm in the sample employed 478 people. 68 (i.e. 45,3%) firms employed between 50 and 250 people, 82 (i.e. 54,7%) employed more than 250 people.
The telephone interview method was adopted to obtain responses to the study’s survey instrument. Although it was a resource intensive option, it was chosen over the standard methods of administrating paper or online surveys for various reasons: (1) to be able to clarify respondents’ queries; (2) to avoid the situation whereby a busy executive or senior manager delegated the task of filling up the survey to a secretary; and (3) and to ensure that most of the responses collected were complete and usable for data analysis.
All questions on process management were measured on a six point Likert scale (1=”fully disagree” – 6=”fully agree”). In order to facilitate interpretation, scores were aggregated after data collection as follows: score 1 or 2 = “Disagree”, score 3 or 4 = “Neither agree nor disagree” and score 5 or 6 = “Agree”.
Results of the survey:
- Process documentation
- Management commitment towards the process approach
- The role of the process owner
- Process performance measurement
- Corporate culture in line with the process approach
- Business process management software
- People and Expertise
- BPM Office
- Process-oriented HR-systems
- Organizational structure in line with the process approach