The impact of process quality measurement on financial performance of market oriented firm

Market orientation and process quality measurement had been regarded in the literature as sources of competitive advantage for business performance.However, both these concepts had been discussed separately in their own respective academic discipline. In the context of business operation today,the organisation need to work as a team to survive in the challenging business environment. Market orientation originates from the marketing concept. On the other hand, process quality measurement originates from quality management principles and is viewed as one of its tools. Despite their importance, many organisations have not combined them in order to become a market driven and quality oriented organisation. Thus, this study investigated the impact of process quality measurement on the relationship between market orientation and financial performance of manufacturing firms in Malaysia. Although the overall results showed lack of evidence on the impact of process quality measurement on market orientation-financial performance relationships, individual results signified that process quality measurement moderate the relationship between market action and financial performance

Unleashing the Effectiveness of Process-oriented Information Systems: Problem Analysis, Critical Success Factors, Implications

Process-oriented information systems (IS) aim at the computerized support of business processes. So far, contemporary IS have often fail to meet this goal. To better understand this drawback, to systematically identify its rationales, and to derive critical success factors for business process support, we conducted three empirical studies: an exploratory case study in the automotive domain, an online survey among 79 IT professionals, and another online survey among 70 business process management (BPM) experts. This paper summarizes the findings of these studies, puts them in relation with each other, and uses them to show that "process-orientation" is scarce and "process-awareness" is needed in IS engineering

Green business behaviour, green technologies, and sustainability in SMEs

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to determine the management and environmentally- friendly behavior of small-scale aquaculture businesses with emphasis on the institutional environment, entrepreneurial orientation, and green technology. Design/methodology/approach: The sample consists of 198 respondents in the aquaculturebased SMEs, analyzed with structural equation model (SEM) by using AMOS software. Findings: The findings show the role of management and business behavior in green business of aquaculture SMEs. This behavior affects the cost and resource efficiency. Practical implications: The results contribute for SMEs how to manage environmentally friendly businesses through process that encourages environmental governance. Originality/value: This finding is based on resource based view theory, by identifying and managing the potential resources through green business initiative in SMEs.peer-reviewe

Process-based Organization Design Model: Theoretical Review and Model Conceptualization

The complexity of today's business world is translated into complexity of the company's organization design (Galbraith, 2002). Organizations are forced to quickly adapt to emerging complexity if they want to survive. The change is addressing all areas of business, especially questioning organizational effectiveness and trying to find optimal solutions for doing business. In accordance with requirements, competitive trends are pushing executives to rethink traditional design configurations. Factors such as increased competition in cost, quality and service, and technical change have forced companies not only to seek out new ways of doing old tasks, but also new ways of organizing either old or new tasks (Cross, 1990). Such focus on the flow of work within organizations, but as well as between them, is emphasizing process orientation as a new management paradigm. Inefficiencies of the two most commonly present structures – functional and divisional, in addition to emerging business trends, place the emphasis on a process-based organization as one of the possible solutions. The process-based organization is lead by the process paradigm, which is focused on the horizontal view of business activities and alignment of organizational systems towards business processes. Regardless of a large interest on business processes, existing organization design theory offers only general guidelines for process-based organizations or more precisely, a process-based organization design model. Consequently, the purpose of the paper is to demystify process-based organization design model. By clearly distinguishing between different levels of process orientation, and by addressing characteristics of the chosen model the paper will lead to better understanding of this way of organizing. Eventually, an operationalized model of process-based organization is developed. Furthermore, the paper elaborates on differences between process-based and other organizational structures and philosophies (e.g. functional, product, matrix, project, team-based). Besides structural elements, which will be in the primary focus, the paper will discuss the alignment of all other important organization design elements for process environment (e.g., management style, reward systems, performance metrics, people practices, organizational culture, etc.). There would be proposed necessary adjustments of organizational elements which should be aligned with the process-based structural solution. In such way, some of the blind spots of process-based organization design model would be revealed, providing practical implications for its implementation and ultimately, offering solution for rising business complexity.organization design, process-based organization, process-based organization design model, business processes

Understanding Process Performance Measurement Systems

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the current state of Process Performance Measurement Systems (PPMS) by means of a systematic review of literature. The PPMS literature is reviewed using a systematic approach. Based on an extensive literature review only twelve articles that contain the term PPMS in the title were found. The literature analysis showed that PPMS is a relatively new topic in the area of performance measurement. In order to understand PPMS, it was crucial to explain the concepts of business process management, business performance measurement and Performance Measurement System (PMS) which are well known and used in the literature and practice. PPMS is a special type of PMS that should be used in process-oriented organizations. Limitations of this research lie in the fact that all the conclusions were derived only from the literature, not empirical research. The results presented in the paper continue towards providing an updated overview of the current state of performance measurement, especially PPMS in order to identify the existing research gaps on which ongoing and future research efforts regarding this topic can be focused.business process management; process orientation; performance indicators; business performance measurement; Performance Measurement System; Process Performance Measurement System

The Role of Electronic Services in Transformational Government: A Unified Services Theory Perspective and Implications for Trust

A major difficulty in deriving practical managerial insights from the transformational government perspective is that in the existing literature ‘transformation’ is usually expressed in terms of desirable qualities rather than concrete transformation of structures and processes. Although it is possible to address transformational government issues from diverse areas such as Customer Relationship Management, Business Process Management, Management of Information Systems, and so forth, the adoption of an integrative theoretical basis that could accommodate different perspectives around ‘service’, the core subject of interest, would certainly facilitate generation of useful managerial insights and approaches in the area. The main purpose of this conceptual paper is to fill this gap by presenting a Unified Services Theory (UST) perspective of issues concerning the development of electronic services in the transformational government area. The paper will focus upon customer orientation and process standardisation issues

Menadžment poslovnih procesa i znanja u hrvatskim poduzećima

Contemporary companies function in constantly changing and highly turbulent business environment which is the cause of a constant need for change and learning at individual, group, organizational as well as interorganizational level (61). Organizational learning is considered to be one of the most promising concepts in modern managerial literature. According to de Geus ‘ability to learn faster than your competitors might be the only sustainable competitive advantage you have’ (11). Dimovski (12) provides an overview of previous research and identifies four perspectives on organizational learning. His model manages to merge informational, interpretational, strategic and behavioral approach to organizational learning and defines it as a process of information acquisition, information interpretation and resulting behavioral and cognitive changes, which should in turn have an impact on organizational performance. In recent research, another measurement variable for organizational learning emerged – Information quality (18). Another research topic introduced in this research was determination and evaluation of the business process orientation construct. Although definitions of the business process orientation vary, we adopt the McCormack’s and Johnson’s (2001) definition of process orientation: An organization that, in all its thinking, emphasizes process as opposed to hierarchies with a special emphasis on outcomes and customer satisfaction. McCormack and Johnson (2001) conducted an empirical study to explore the relationship between BPO and enhanced business performance. The research results showed that BPO is critical in reducing conflict and encouraging greater connectedness within an organization, while improving business performance. The more business process oriented an organization, the better it performs both from an overall perspective as well as from the perspective of the employees. The BPO construct describes a four-step pathway for systematically advancing business processes along the maturity continuum (Ad Hoc, Defined, Linked, and Integrated level). Each step builds on the work of the previous steps to apply improvement strategies that are appropriate to the current maturity level. It is important to note that trying to skip maturity levels is counter-productive, since each level builds a foundation from which to achieve the subsequent level. An organization must evolve through these levels to establish a culture of process excellence. The goal of our contribution was to test differences in the way companies learn and perceive their business process orientation in Slovenia and Croatia. During September and October 2005 questionnaires were distributed to Slovenian and Croatian companies with more than 50 employees. In Slovenian case, 203 completed questionnaires were returned (which accounts for 16.5% response rate) while in Croatia 202 completed questionnaires were returned to the research group (which accounts for 11.5% response rate). Received questionnaires from both countries allow us to compare the results and to implicitly test the impact of various country-based factors on the organizational learning phenomena. Using data gathered from two independent samples (Slovenia and Croatia) analysis of variance method and t-test were used in order to get the answer to our research question relating to differences in organizational learning and business process orientation between Slovenian and Croatian companies. Results indicate that Slovenian and Croatian companies differ only in 17 out of 48 items considering organizational learning research – especially in the way they acquire information and the way they perceive behavioral and cognitive changes currently under place. Croatian companies are more outward directed when acquiring information and are witnessing more turbulent changes in their internal as well as external business environment. Nevertheless, there are much more similar traits in the way Slovenian and Croatian companies learn than there are dissimilarities. However, there are some indications that Slovenian companies already bridged the transition period, while majority of Croatian companies still has to cross that bridge. Data analysis considering second part of the research revealed some important aspects of business process orientation in Slovenia and Croatia. It showed that Slovenian companies have reached slightly higher maturity level than Croatian companies, which was not surprising considering Croatian contemporary history. Though statistically significant, the difference is not large and the general state of the BPO in both countries is promising. Still, a lot is left to change and improve in order to transform the companies into process-oriented ones. The investigation also revealed some differences between both counties. Slovenian companies give more emphasis to the quality of process data and have monitoring and control systems in place to assure it. Besides that jobs are more frequently multidimensional and not just simple tasks in Slovenia then in Croatia. This is important aspect of process orientation whereby employees need to be equipped with wide arsenal of knowledge and skills in order to participate in different areas of a process. To realize BPO projects, most companies use different business process modelling/management methods and tools, which integrate components for static and dynamic modelling, measuring and monitoring the performance of the processes, as well as enabling the transformation of business process diagrams into tailor-made applications supporting the execution of workflows. The focus of this paper is to discuss the application of business process oriented concepts in different areas, depending on different projects' objectives and goals. The paper provides the results of a search in literature as well as a summary and comparison of features concerning business process modelling and business process management tools, placing them within an empirically derived framework.menadžment poslovnih procesa, menadžment znanja

New-product development : the process in specialty and performance chemicals

Effective new-product development will be one of the greatest management challenges of the 1990s. This paper explores the new-product development process and discusses the process in terms of specialty and performance chemical businesses. The focus of this paper is on understanding how structure (particularly working structure), business orientation, and the existence of strategy influences new-product development. The paper discusses the rationale for, and the measurement of, loose-tight structures in the new-product development process. An approach to measuring business orientation is suggested, tested and recommended for further study

SALES ORGANIZATION AND FUNCTIONALITY IN COMPANIES ON THE INDUSTRIAL MARKET IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA

Selling and sales management is a new discipline and its importance is growing since companies are becoming more and more marketing oriented. The problem of modern business is not how to produce but how to sell the product. It means that there is no successful personal sale without effective sales management because more and more products need to be brought closer to the customer in the selling process. In this paper I will focus on one aspect of selling and sales management, sales organization and functionality. There are two methods of sales organization and functionality, empirical method and scientific method. The purpose of my research was to find out if the sales organization and functionality in Bosnia and Herzegovina companies was in accordance with the scientific method or empirical method. Despite the fact that the sources on selling and sales management are mostly focused on B2C (business to customer) market, my research was focused on B2B (business to business) market companies in order to find out if the theoretical aspects on sale and sales management on B2C market are applicable on B2B market. The objects of my research are five leading companies on Bosnian and Herzegovina industrial market.sales management, sales organization, marketing orientation, scientific method, empirical method.

Critical success factors of business process management:investigating the coverage of business process (management) maturity models

Business Process Management (BPM) aims to improve the quality of business processes by consolidating the concepts of modelling, reengineering, automation, management, and innovation. Tailoring multi-faceted BPM to specific contexts of organizations on the ground of fast-growing information technology is the challenge of the current decade. A considerable number of critical success factors (CSFs) for BPM has been proposed by various studies in the scientific literature to provide insight into the process of achieving BPM. However, only few of these studies propose guidelines/practices for addressing the CSFs. This study is intended to provide a state-of-the-art of CSFs of BPM by a systematic review of scientific literature and to investigate content coverage of business process maturity models as a potential enabler of realization of these CSFs. We searched the studies between the years 2000 and 2015 in established digital libraries and identified 14 CSF categories from 18 studies out of 242 studies retrieved initially. Following that, we searched for evidence on the existence of each CSF category in five maturity models, namely Business Process Management Capability Framework (BPM-CF), Business Process Orientation Maturity Model (BPO-MM), Business Process Orientation Maturity Framework (BPO-MF), Business Process Maturity Model (OMG-BPMM), and Process and Enterprise Maturity Model (PEMM). The findings from our investigation show that, despite the variance in degree of coverage of CSF categories by selected BPMMs, maturity models stand as a promising reference for organizations to start their BPM efforts.\u3cbr/\u3