Robotic process automation from the view of design capital
Loading...
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
School of Business |
Master's thesis
Unless otherwise stated, all rights belong to the author. You may download, display and print this publication for Your own personal use. Commercial use is prohibited.
Author
Date
2022
Department
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Information and Service Management (ISM)
Language
en
Pages
64+3
Series
Abstract
As organizations are undergoing digital transformations, and an increasing number of work tasks have become digitized, a need for workflow automation tools to operate these tasks has risen. These automation tools promise organizations increased operational efficiency, cost savings, and error reduction by allowing tasks, that were previously conducted manually, to be automated. One such tool that has been increasingly gathering attention in both literature and practice is Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Robotic Process Automation tools operate by mimicking the actions that a human worker would take to carry out a task. An RPA robot’s workflow can be for example configured to consist of interacting with elements on an application’s user interface by clicking or typing into them. Compared to other available automation tools, RPA is seen to be a more lightweight and easy-to-configure solution, that can be implemented and maintained with fewer resources. This study aims to cover how implementing RPA to automate a business process affects an organization’s digital architecture and its ability to leverage this architecture, by utilizing a concept called design capital. Design capital can be defined as consisting of the cumulative stock of digital designs owned or controlled by a firm. It can be a major competitive factor for companies, depending on its state either allowing for greater organizational agility or presenting challenges in developing designs and leveraging existing ones (Woodard et al., 2013). By conducting an action design research (ADR) study at a Finnish engineering company, this research identified three distinct types of effects to design capital as a result of an RPA implementation (option-creating, debt-creating, and debt-mitigating effects). The findings indicate that the resulting change in the state of design capital can be considered as fairly complex and involves a great number of contributing factors. Additionally, the extent to which these effects can be seen to be unique to RPA is also reflected on.Description
Thesis advisor
Penttinen, EskoRinta-Kahila, Tapani
Keywords
Robotic Process Automation, RPA, design capital, digital options, technical debt, action design research, ADR
