THE REAL WORLD APPLICABILITY OF BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT PRACTICES IN IT ENABLED MANAGEMENT UNDERGRADUATE PEDAGOGY: A CASE STUDY FROM SRI LANKAN ACADEMIA

Abstract

The current state of business world is turbulent at its best and demands a constant urge to surpass the competition in the most strategic manner. In this agile environment, process optimization has been identified as the key area in enhancing the productivity to outperform competitors while maximizing the stakeholder wealth. Business Process Management is the scientific method of optimizing the business processes which can also be successfully adapted as a holistic management approach in any organization as it can be optimally included in streamlining the business processes with organizational strategies. Currently companies are in a constant quest for experts and professionals in this area for recruitment purposes due to the emerging attention towards the subject. As the global demand rapidly increases on BPM expertise, it is being found that there are certain gaps to be bridged when recruiting capable personnel for the industry requirements. As the foundation for this professionalism is laid during the undergraduate level of education, it is essential to develop a proper model in BPM education for the Sri Lankan academia: especially for education in management and IT context. The purpose of this study is to arrive at a conclusion on the industry requirement for BPM expertise, current BPM practices that have been adapted and to critically analyze the degree of alignment of these practices with the industry requirement. At the completion of this study, a BPM model for Sri Lankan academia will be suggested along with the corrective actions to be taken in order to implement a proper pedagogy curriculum for BPM in Sri Lankan Academia. Extending this model for Asian educational contexts will be a key consideration in the further proceedings section of this study.

Key Words: Business Process Management, Curriculum Design, Education, Management and IT, Competency Gap, Best practices

For full paper: fmscresearch@sjp.ac.lk