Business Process Automation and Its Implications for Organizational Structure and Employee Roles
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.30750/ijarst.120103Keywords:
business process automation, robotic process automation, organisational structure, employee roles, span of control, exception handlingAbstract
Business process automation (BPA), through robotic process automation, workflow engines and increasingly AI-based document and decision handling, is usually evaluated for its cost savings. Its consequences for how organisations are structured and what employees do receive less systematic attention. This paper develops a task-portfolio model in which automation is applied to task types in descending order of routineness, and derives the implications for headcount by role, span of control, exception handling and the composition of remaining human work. A simulation of 1,000 task types with varying routineness and volume shows that as the automated share rises from 0 to 80%, transactional headcount falls by 70%, supervisory headcount falls by 85% as spans of control widen, automation and analyst roles quadruple, exception-handling load grows continuously because automated tasks generate exceptions in proportion to their non-routineness, and the non-routine share of remaining manual work rises from 51% to 83%. The paper argues that these dynamics flatten hierarchies, shift the centre of gravity of human work toward judgement and exception resolution, and create a new role family around automation design and oversight. It discusses the transition problem for supervisors and transactional staff and proposes a design sequence that aligns structural change with the pace of automation.
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