Cultural Differences in Implementing Business Process Management Systems

In this paper we present the results of an international comparative research conducted through a special web survey, i.e. an online `game' to rate and classify Critical Success Factors (CFSs) for BPMS implementations. The survey was completed by 39 respondents from 11 different countries. Central to the research was the question how BPM-systems success factors are perceived by professionals from different countries (i.e. cultural backgrounds) and how this is related to other characteristics such as their level of experience within the BPM domain. The respondents judged a total of 55 factors in two ways: ( 1) by allocating them to one of the five domains of BPMS implementation, and (2) by ranking their importance for BPMS implementations. Significant differences were found between respondents from Northern European versus Anglo- American countries, and between respondents with different levels of experience with BPMS implementations.