Friction and inertia: business change, corporate real estate portfolios and the UK office market

It has been asserted that business reorganisation and new working practices are transforming the nature of demand for business space. Downsizing, delayering, business process reengineering and associated initiatives alter the amount, type and location of space required by firms. The literature has neglected the impact of real estate market structures on the ability of organisations to successfully implement these new organisational forms or contemporary working practices. Drawing from UK research, the paper demonstrates that, while new working practices are widespread, their impact on the corporate real estate portfolio is less dramatic than often supposed. In part, this is attributed to inflexibility in market structures which constrains the supply of appropriate space

RETHINKING THE BUSINESS PROCESS THROUGH REENGINEERING

Rethinking business through reengineering is based on the assumption that to meet contemporary demands of quality, service, flexibility, and low cost, processes must be kept simple. Examples of simplifying processes are combining several jobs into one, letting workers make decisions, performing the steps in a process in a natural order, and performing work where it makes the most sense. The net result is that work may be shifted across functional boundaries several times to expedite its accomplishment. Traditional inspection and control procedures are often eliminated or deferred until the process is complete, providing further cost savings. The authors, focusing their research on enterprises from Oltenia Region, demonstrate how reengineering can be carried out in a variety of corporate settings. But although workers are the ones who need to be empowered to carry out reengineering, the authors are adamant that the process must start at the top. This is because it involves making major changes that are likely to cut across traditional organizational boundaries. Those empowered to make the changes at lower levels must know they have the support of top management, or change won�t occur.reengineering, rethinking business processes, regional economy, leadership, organization

Friction and Inertia: Business Change, Corporate Real Estate Portfolios and the U.K. Office Market

It has been asserted that business reorganization and new working practices are transforming the nature of demand for business space. Downsizing, delayering, business process re-engineering and associated initiatives alter the amount, type and location of space required by firms. The literature has neglected the impact of real estate market structures on the ability of organizations to implement these new organizational forms or contemporary working practices successfully. Drawing from research in the United Kingdom, the article demonstrates that, while new working practices are widespread, their impact on the corporate real estate portfolio is less dramatic than often supposed. In part, this is attributed to inflexibility in market structures, which constrains the supply of appropriate space.

The Evolving Role of Information Specialists as Change Agents in Performance Management: A Cross Disciplinary Study

This paper aims to explore the changing role of the Information Specialist (ISp) in the implementation of business performance improvement through business process re-engineering (BPR) initiatives. The paper will begin by examining the evolution of BPR and then discuss the changing role of the ISp. Technology enabled Performance Management (PM) and its strategic implications are found to be key to measuring the effectiveness of BPR and the role of the ISp is a vital part of this. Through a literature review and case based empirical evidence a conceptual framework is developed to appraise the role of the ISp

A Dynamic Embedding Model of the Media Landscape

Information about world events is disseminated through a wide variety of news channels, each with specific considerations in the choice of their reporting. Although the multiplicity of these outlets should ensure a variety of viewpoints, recent reports suggest that the rising concentration of media ownership may void this assumption. This observation motivates the study of the impact of ownership on the global media landscape and its influence on the coverage the actual viewer receives. To this end, the selection of reported events has been shown to be informative about the high-level structure of the news ecosystem. However, existing methods only provide a static view into an inherently dynamic system, providing underperforming statistical models and hindering our understanding of the media landscape as a whole. In this work, we present a dynamic embedding method that learns to capture the decision process of individual news sources in their selection of reported events while also enabling the systematic detection of large-scale transformations in the media landscape over prolonged periods of time. In an experiment covering over 580M real-world event mentions, we show our approach to outperform static embedding methods in predictive terms. We demonstrate the potential of the method for news monitoring applications and investigative journalism by shedding light on important changes in programming induced by mergers and acquisitions, policy changes, or network-wide content diffusion. These findings offer evidence of strong content convergence trends inside large broadcasting groups, influencing the news ecosystem in a time of increasing media ownership concentration

BPR change programmes in the UK and Brazil: a case study investigation with consideration of employee communication and other factors

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Business Process Re-engineering (BPR): A Tool for Improved Customer Service in Municipalities

This paper examines the appropriateness of business process re-engineering (BPR) in the improvement of customer service in local government. A content analysis of documents, a survey administered to municipal managers in 26 municipalities in Ontario, and a case study analysis of BPR implementation in four municipalities were conducted. The findings reveal that there is no clearly defined process or format for conducting BPR in Ontario municipalities

Issues with implementing ERP in the public administration

As governments work to transform their environments from an internal resource optimization to a process integration and external collaboration focus, integrated systems stand at the forefront of solutions that will achieve this goal. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is proven to significantly increase efficiency, improve information access, reduce total cost of ownership, and help government achieve the highest levels of accountability and constituent service. Yet implementing ERP in a manner that achieves its promises is no easy task. Public sector organizations often rationalize their ERP modernization initiatives within the context of budgetary constraints and are faced with multiple ERP providers that, on the surface, are difficult to discern. In addition, adjudicating between competing ERP solutions on their functional merit is not only difficult because of the complexity of ERP systems, but it is further complicated by the intricacy of the government acquisition process. Therefore, it is particularly important that the business value be sold at the executive and political levels of government and, to be successful, that government embeds the ERP solution within its culture and processes. What's more, the level of detailed analysis required to map functional requirements to ERP solutions is an arduous task that, even if done thoroughly, hasn't always delivered a successful implementation. In this article, we will address these issues by examining the evolution and shortcomings of ERP solutions; by defining the features and functionality needed to address government transformation; and by recommending the steps to take to position for success.government, public organizations, ERP, integrated systems

Critical success factors in ERP implementation: A review

ERP systems have become vital strategic tools in today’s competitive business environment. This ongoing research study presents a review of recent research work in ERP systems. It attempts to identify the main benefits of ERP systems, the drawbacks and the critical success factors for implementation discussed in the relevant literature. The findings revealed that despite some organizations have faced challenges undertaking ERP implementations, many others have enjoyed the benefits that the systems have brought to the organizations. ERP system facilitates the smooth flow of common functional information and practices across the entire organization. In addition, it improves the performance of the supply chain and reduces the cycle times. However, without top management support, having appropriate business plan and vision, re-engineering business process, effective project management, user involvement and education and training, organizations can not embrace the full benefits of such complex system and the risk of failure might be at high level