Strategy, ICT Investment, BPR And Business Performance: An Empirical Investigation

The study on the links between strategy, structure and performance has been for long time a fundamental and highly important research topic for the management researchers and practitioners. In this direction this paper presents a ‘holistic’ empirical investigation of the whole network of relations between business strategy (at a first level), information and communication technologies (ICT) investment, non-ICT investment and BPR (at a second level), and finally business performance (at a third level). It is based on firm-level data from 271 Greek firms, which are used for the estimation of structural equation models (SEM) connecting the above variables, theoretically based on the Cobb-Douglas Production Function. It is concluded that none of the three generic business strategies defined by M. Porter (cost leadership, differentiation and focus) has a significant effect on ICT and non-ICT investment; on the contrary, particular strategic choices (differentiation and focus strategy) have been found to drive process change. Also, it has been found that all the investigated internal factors, ICT investment, non-ICT investment and BPR, have a positive impact on business performance. Concerning their interrelations, ICT investment affects positively BPR, which indicates that BPR is a partial mediator in the relationship between ICT and performance; on the contrary, this does not happen with non-ICT investment, indicating an important difference between these two types of capital investment as to their relation with process change

THE ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY FOR SERVICE INNOVATION IN SHARING ECONOMY ORGANIZATIONS – A SERVICE-DOMINANT LOGIC PERSPECTIVE

The role and influence of information technology related to business and value creation of a firm are discussed controversially. The question how technology can drive service innovations is especially crucial in highly competitive and quickly developing areas such as digital platforms – and at the same time not well understood. This study investigates the role of information technology for service innovation in sharing economy organizations. These organizations are digital platforms that conflate physical and digital service elements. Using a service-dominant logic perspective, we conduct an interpretive multiple-case study to gain a deeper understanding for types of service innovation in this area and the different roles that IT can play in these initiatives. Our findings reveal different areas for service innovation and thereby help identifying previously unexplored interdependencies between the service ecosystem and value co-creation. We furthermore find that organizations’ choices on the role of IT are dependent on the level of heterogeneity and standardization of the mediated transactions. We derive four archetypes for the role of IT in service innovation that serve to explain how and why IT is exploited sharing economy organizations. The findings are translated into practical guidelines for managers of digital platforms

A Quantitative Analysis of Business Process Reengineering and Organizational Resistance: The Case of Uganda

ABSTRACT Despite efforts by many organisations to redesign their processes, many of them have not succeeded. The main objective of the study was to analyse the extent to which organisational resistance impacts on the implementation of BPR. We used survey methodology using a questionnaire for data collection. Descriptive analysis of factors that cause resistance was conducted and results showed that only 30.4% of BPR in Uganda have been successful. The results showed that the factors that impact on BPR implementation include; users’ awareness of BPR project, level of emotional response, organisational resistance, and failure of management to create awareness among others. Organisational resistance can significantly lead to failure of BPR and therefore user involvement should be paramount throughout implementation. This paper is important to organisations that need reform and effectiveness in their business process to highlight the importance of soft issues in BPR and to other researchers of BPR

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

Business process management capabilities

siirretty Doriast

A New Framework for Strategic Information Systems in Airline Industry

Stiff competition in the Airline sector mandates airlines to innovate ways to gain a competitive advantage over their rivals; however, without a strong IT the mission to attain this would be arduous. Large airlines do their best to maximise the use of enterprise systems to stream their business processes. Nonetheless, some airlines are not up to date with technology and are left with few choices when attempting to secure their existence in today’s harsh market. One option is to implement bleeding edge systems concurrently (which is our focus in this paper) due to the fact that very scant research exists regarding this phenomenon, let alone the airline sector itself. The aim of this study is explore and investigate the phenomenon of deploying multi enterprise systems concurrently due to its uniqueness and owing to the fact that this approach is not the common practice most airline undertake. We argue here that having multi Airline Solution Providers (ASP) working together concurrently to constitute a homogeneous solution generates many aspects that necessitate a deep understanding in such matters as competitor ASPs and technology leakage. In addition, the study explored various themes that unleash the phenomenon of the concurrent Multi- collaborative Enterprise Systems (MES). The role of cohesion factors that groups the rivals to work under the umbrella of an organisation was also embarked upon in this study. Various aspects contributing to the success of the MES phenomenon have been exposed with regarding ASP’s interplay, organisation, and other contextual surrounding MES. Finally, this study drew a strategic frame work for airlines that unleash the MES phenomenon. A large airline and its collaborative airline solutions provider were taken as the scope of study; the airline had over twenty six thousand employees. Five reputable world class ASPs in the airline industry in various fields were also included. The twenty five participants in this study were professionals in IT and the airline business besides being involved heavily in the phenomenon of deploying concurrent multi enterprise systems. Grounded Theory techniques were used to analyse the large volume of data gathered underpinning this by using state of art software package such as nVivo. This research has explored the phenomenon under study using grounded theory methodology to build a theoretical model that best presents the MES initiative. In addition, it has offered a well-founded framework that explains the MES phenomenon in details, which is relevant to both practitioners and researchers.This research has clearly explored and demonstrated the inhibitors and enablers in the undertaking of MES. In particular, it has focused on enablers of the organisation that received the MES. Furthermore, it has explored the interrelationship between ASPs and exposed some of the aspects that need more focus between rivals working on the same project.Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabi

The effect of business process reengineering (BPR) on public sector organisation performance in a developing economy context

This research develops a research model to analyse whether the implementation of BPR by public organisations in the developing economies contributes to the business process and overall organisational performance. BPR has been widely adopted by private businesses and has been a focus of research since the 1990s and it is still one of the top five management concerns for information technology (IT) executives globally. However, BPR’s adoption in the public sector in general, and public sectors in developing economies in particular, is a relatively recent and little researched phenomenon. The concept of New Public Management (NPM) and public sector pressure for administration efficiency, transparency, good governance, accountability and e-Government is the major driving force behind embracing and practicing BPR by the public sector in the developing economies. Public sector BPR literature shows that there is lack of research that theorises validates and develops a measurement model to evaluate the organisational performance effect of public sector BPR in general and those in developing economies in particular. Given the fact that developing economies are investing heavily in BPR with the aim of modernising public administration, there is, therefore, a need for empirical investigation of whether BPR is improving their performance. Hence, the main research question addressed in this research is: Does BPR matter to the performance of public sector organisations? The research’s conceptual foundation is based on resource-based view (RBV) theory and its complementary competence perspective; BPR literature and the public sector organisation performance literature; and from findings of the exploratory study. The framework establishes the relationships between BPR resources and implementation issues, BPR depth and BPR outcome and impact, and develops 13 hypotheses. The research pursues the positivist paradigm. Both interview (n = 16) and survey (n = 209) methods are used to collect data in two stages—exploratory study and main study—from public administration organisations in Ethiopia. The psychometric properties of the survey instrument are established through a rigorous procedure involving exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis techniques, using SPSS and AMOS, respectively. The findings show that a public sector organisation in a developing economy can use BPR to improve process and overall organisational performance if it (a) has accumulated stock of BPR-relevant resources and capabilities; (b) has undertaken BPR with sufficient depth; (c) is developing a post-BPR complementary competencies to sustain and further enhance the BPR changes; and (d) has mitigated the negative effect of BPR implementation problems. The research model explains 54% and 40% of the variance in organisational and business process performance, respectively. The research makes an original contribution to public sector BPR literature through its development and validation of the model and accompanying measurement instrument. In particular, the conception, measurement, hypotheses and empirical findings of the BPR complementary competency construct represent a significant contribution in advancing the theoretical foundation and the empirical basis of the BPR, public sector BPR and developing economy BPR literature. The research also offers relevant recommendations to public managers and BPR practitioners on how to execute BPR successfully

A model for improving the role of IT in BPR

Purpose – Extensive literature on business process management suggests that organisations could enhance their overall performance by adopting a process view of business. However, there is a lack of empirical research in this field. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the understanding of the process view and process maturity levels in a transition economy and to test the impact of process orientation maturity level on organisational performance. Design/methodology/approach – Empirical investigation combined an exploratory-confirmatory approach using factor analysis and structural equation modelling. Findings – The investigation confirms the impact of business process orientation on organisational performance in a transition economy. The link is even stronger than in the original investigation. The results show that business process orientation leads to better non-financial performance and indirectly to better financial performance. Practical implications – The research confirms that business process orientation is advantageous for companies since it has a positive influence on organisational performance. The finding that the impact on financial performance is indirect through non-financial performance suggests that the companies have to take that view of performance into consideration as well. Originality/value – The paper is valuable for academics and practitioners because the impact of business process orientation on organisational performance has been confirmed for a transitional economy. Its originality is in the measurement of organisational performance, for which a more detailed specification of organisational performance based on the balanced scorecard concept that includes non-financial performance measures has been used