Literature Review
PM has been widely studied in literature as Sidorova and Isik (2010) and Houy, Fettke and Loos (2010) concluded in their studies (see Table 1). In fact, both studies highlighted the dramatic increase in the number of articles published related to PM topics during the analyzed periods.
Table 1. Main characteristics of the international PM reviews
| TITLE | Business process research: a cross-disciplinary review | Empirical research in business process management-analysis of an emerging field of research |
| AUTHOR | Sidorova, A.; Isik, O. | Houy, C.; Fettke, P.; Loos, P. |
| YEAR | 2010 | 2010 |
| DATABASES USED | EBSCOHost | Two databases
(not specified) |
| METHODOLOGY | Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) | Scientometric methods |
| No PAPERS REVIWED | 2700 | 355 |
| PERIOD | 09/1927 – 12/2008 | 1991-2010 |
| ORIENTATION | Theory | Empirical papers |
Source: Authors
However, that increase was not equally distributed among countries (see Table 2) and more research is needed in certain areas. That was the case of Spain, which was placed in a rather unfavorable position with only four published papers about PM. Although the results may be biased because the used databases were mainly Anglo-Saxon, the difference was large enough to be taken into consideration.
Table 2. Number of PM papers published by country
| Country | Total number
of articles | First article published in the year... |
| United Kingdom | 105 | 1993 |
| United States | 97 | 1994 |
| … | … | … |
| … | … | … |
| Spain | 4 | 2004 |
Source: (Houy et al., 2010, p.632)
Given this huge difference and the absence of literature reviews on PM focused on the Spanish literature, a review using Dialnet database, which is the largest repository for Spanish-written publications, was carried out by the authors (Sanchez & Blanco, 2014). Their study concluded that practitioners are interested in the PM concept. However, research is in the early stages of development.
Furthermore, a thematic analysis showed that, as in the international case, the implementation of PM systems is a recurring theme. However, some research gaps were detected on topics such as main PM factors (barriers, enablers, motivations, and benefits), human resources management, corporate culture and innovation.
Overall, it is considered that the PM field, despite being a relatively mature field in the Anglo-Saxon literature, still presents many opportunities for development in the Spanish-speaking environment, especially in the above mentioned topics.
The Spanish business framework has a significant share of SMEs, greater than 99%, as in other European countries (INE, 2016). Consequently, guaranteeing the survival and efficiency of SMEs is essential due to their contribution to the national economy. Thus, PM could be the means to achieve this goal.
Overall, based on both national and international reviews carried out, a conceptual review of the PM concept together with its main barriers, enablers and benefits was done. In the following lines, the main results are summarized. It is important to highlight that the obtained results are not only referred to SMEs because authors did not find studies devoted specifically and exclusively to SMEs. Thus, the relevance of these kinds of studies is reinforced.