Why is BPMN not appropriate for Process Maps?

Process map is an abstract depiction of all company’s processes and their relations. It provides an overview of how an organization operates without going into process details. It is often used as foundation for the detailed process modeling where BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation) is used for modeling the details of business processes. Regardless of BPMN’s existence, most process maps from practice have been designed with software programs not initially developed for process modeling. Thus, the question we aim to answer is: Why is BPMN not appropriate for designing process maps? To address this, we semantically map process map concepts with BPMN concepts and use the principles of the representation theory introduced by Wand and Weber (1995) to find out whether BPMN is complete and clear in terms of the process map meta-model. By this means, we were able to provide valuable implications for both research and practice.