Exploring potentials of digital nudging for business processes

PurposeBusiness process improvement is vital for organizations as business environments are becoming ever more volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. Process improvement methods help organizations sustain competitiveness. Many existing methods, however, do not fit emerging business environments as they entail initiatives with long implementation times, high investments and limited involvement of process participants. What is needed are agile process improvement approaches. The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential of digital nudging – a concept offering tools that lead individuals to better decisions – to improve business processes.Design/methodology/approachUsing process deviance as theoretical lens, an online experiment with 473 participants is conducted. Within the experiment, business processes and digital nudges are implemented to examine whether digital nudging can mitigate the weaknesses of existing process improvement methods.FindingsDigital nudging can influence the decisions of process participants and entail positive process deviance that leads to process improvement opportunities. Further, the research gives a first hint on the effectiveness of different digital nudges and lays the foundation for future research.Research limitations/implicationsSince exploring a completely new field of research and conducting the experiment in a synthetic environment, the paper serves as a first step toward the combination of digital nudging, business process improvements and positive process deviance.Originality/valueThe major achievement reported in this paper is the exploration of a new field of research. Thus, digital nudging shapes up as a promising foundation for agile process improvement, a discovery calling for future research at the intersection of digital nudging and business process management.