Empirical investigation on satisfaction and service quality level of radical process change implementation

The paper reviews the literature related to the implementation of radical process changes in higher education (HE) environment. Several issues and implementation results related to radical process change in HEIs, particularly business process reengineering (BPR), are being investigated. Furthermore, as the implementation of process change would have an impact in HEIs,specifically on service quality and customer satisfaction, this paper discusses both concepts. A survey has been developed to assess the students’ satisfaction of the radical process change implemented in one of the HEIs, namely HEI-A which was selected as a case study. The results indicate some significant differences among groups for both satisfaction and service quality measured.The paper provides a framework for future research to develop a metric for measuring satisfaction and service quality level in HEIs. This research contributes to studies of BPR in HE context, by focusing on the key processes performance

Human Resource and Employment Practices in Telecommunications Services, 1980-1998

[Excerpt] In the academic literature on manufacturing, much research and debate have focused on whether firms are adopting some form of “high-performance” or “high-involvement” work organization based on such practices as employee participation, teams, and increased discretion, skills, and training for frontline workers (Ichniowski et al., 1996; Kochan and Osterman, 1994; MacDuffie, 1995). Whereas many firms in the telecommunications industry flirted with these ideas in the 1980s, they did not prove to be a lasting source of inspiration for the redesign of work and employment practices. Rather, work restructuring in telecommunications services has been driven by the ability of firms to leverage network and information technologies to reduce labor costs and create customer segmentation strategies. “Good jobs” versus “bad jobs,” or higher versus lower wage jobs, do not vary according to whether firms adopt a high- involvement model. They vary along two other dimensions: (1) within firms and occupations, by the value-added of the customer segment that an employee group serves; and (2) across firms, by union and nonunion status. We believe that this customer segmentation strategy is becoming a more general model for employment practices in large-scale service | operations; telecommunications services firms may be somewhat more | advanced than other service firms in adopting this strategy because of certain unique industry characteristics. The scale economies of network technology are such that once a company builds the network infrastructure to a customer’s specifications, the cost of additional services is essentially zero. As a result, and notwithstanding technological uncertainty, all of the industry’s major players are attempting to take advantage of system economies inherent in the nature of the product market and technology to provide customized packages of multimedia products to identified market segments. They have organized into market-driven business units providing differentiated services to large businesses and institutions, small businesses, and residential customers. They have used information technologies and process reengineering to customize specific services to different segments according to customer needs and ability to pay. Variation in work and employment practices, or labor market segmentation, follows product market segmentation. As a result, much of the variation in employment practices in this industry is within firms and within occupations according to market segment rather than across firms. In addition, despite market deregulation beginning in 1984 and opportunities for new entrants, a tightly led oligopoly structure is replacing the regulated Bell System monopoly. Former Bell System companies, the giants of the regulated period, continue to dominate market share in the post-1984 period. Older players and new entrants alike are merging and consolidating in order to have access to multimedia markets. What is striking in this industry, therefore, is the relative lack of variation in management and employment practices across firms after more than a decade of experience with deregulation. We attribute this lack of variation to three major sources. (1) Technological advances and network economics provide incentives for mergers, organizational consolidation, and, as indicated above, similar business strategies. (2) The former Bell System companies have deep institutional ties, and they continue to benchmark against and imitate each other so that ideas about restructuring have diffused quickly among them. (3) Despite overall deunionization in the industry, they continue to have high unionization rates; de facto pattern bargaining within the Bell system has remained quite strong. Therefore, similar employment practices based on inherited collective bargaining agreements continue to exist across former Bell System firms

A Case Study Of E-Supply Chain & Business Process Reengineering Of A Semiconductor Company In Malaysia

Penglibatan e-perniagaan dalam rantaian bekalan telah mewujudkan e-rantaian bekalan yang baru (e-SC) di firma-firma tempatan dan global. Due to globalization and advancement in information technology (IT), companies adopt best practices in e-business and supply chain management to be globally competitive as both are realities and prospects in 21st century

Sukuk dan wakaf bagi majukan Kampong Bharu

Sejak berkurun lamanya, filantrofi telah memainkan peranan penting dalam menyumbang kepada meningkatkan kebajikan seluruh manusia di muka bumi ini. Dalam konteks ini, wakaf merupakan penyelamat yang mampu menyediakan pelbagai kemudahan untuk rakyat yang memerlukan. Wakaf dapat menjadi sebagai benteng yang kukuh menyelamatkan umat daripada hakisan sosial dan juga ekonomi. Apabila dana wakaf dikumpul dan digunakan dengan sebaik-baiknya, berbagai bentuk pembangunan ekonomi boleh dilakukan dengan menggunakan pendanaan melalui wakaf

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

The Public Healthcare System in the Transition Countries the Case Study of Serbia

The public healthcare system of Serbia, from the beginning of the past century, when more or less the unperceivable demolition of socialism, was faced with great problems. During the time, they became almost unsolvable due to servitude to old ideas and approaches to goals, organization and managing the state and public sector, political work and everday public and business managing. The application of ruling ideology, performed during the nineties of the last century and the restoration of capitalism expressed itself as unproductive, because everything else remained the same – methods of work, approach, values and standpoint. Its basic feature is institutional non-regulation being the consequence of unclear, foggy and manipulated transition. There are multiple reflexion to the public healtcare system. First the space for the wild privatisation of one part of the public healthcare system was open as well as for the development of irregular partnership between the public and private sector in the production of public goods and services. Second, the creation of a complex, to distribution oriented coalition was initiated that, within the framework of historical heritage, very skillfully using its political and any other influence intended to retain such a situation and stop necessary structural changes in the public healthcare system and the regular development of the private sector as well. Third, within of the framework of foggy and damped transition, arose the miracuous mixture of quasipublic, quasi-market and administrative mechanisms of regulation that nonsensenses necessity for the existence of the public healthcare system. Conseqently, Serbia needs the total reingeneering as a radical, qualitative and on inovations based methodology which, on the basis of development vision, should determine the direction of institutional changes and various reformatory operations in order to construct a radically new public healthcare system – oriented to prevention and preservation of health capacity (of the whole national population) on the basis of development of the relevant system of life and work while the medical treatmant of the mayor part of maladies, especially of those needing sofisticated and costly technologies, should be awarded to the private sector on the basis of personal participation. The key of implementation is in the new definition of the contents of paradigm “equity”. Paradigm that the public health insurance should provide the best healthcare for everybody is false and financially untenable even for much more wealtheir societies. On the other side, equity means necessity to provide the health care in the framework of public, transparent and precise minimum standards for everbody (meaning that nobody will die because he is not insured, because he has not money for cure or, simply, as often happens in Serbia, because he do not know relevant people).Public healthcare system, Unclear, foggy and manipulated transition, Institutional non-regulated environment, Total reingeenering, “Equity”