Democratizing Process Innovation: A Comparative Study of Public Sector Business Process Management Networks

Open Innovation´ is a management perspective that suggests to systematically make use of knowledge that lies outside of an organization´s boundaries for innovation initiatives. It has been heavily discussed for product innovation, however, an ´open´ perspective on business process innovation - here referred to as ´open process innovation´ - has not yet been taken. Examining open process innovation in the public sector, we draw from network management literature and develop an actor- and network-oriented analytical approach. The paper seeks to investigate into what are Business Process Management (BPM) networks, how do they constitute empirically, and are there differences between countries? With the help of a quantitative study in Germany and Japan, we show that the formation of public sector BPM networks is heavily impacted by politico-administrative system variables. The study provides evidence that open process innovation does take place, but different actor sets that play an important role in the respective countries. Based on these findings, implications for theory and practice are discussed, for instance, the network role and skill set requirement of the BPM Manager.