An alternative approach to the attainment of sustained process improvement in information technology driven infrastructures subjected to forced interventions

• Main Author: Watkins, J. A.
• Published: 2012
• Subjects: Reengineering (Management); Organizational change - Management.; Affirmative action programs.; Information technology - Management.
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10210/6721

D.Litt et Phil. === Dynamic organisations with information technology driven infrastructures are invariably in a state of change, which can be attributed to a multitude of planned (as opposed to forced) interventions. Planned interventions can vary greatly in format and the following serves as examples: • Change required as a result of a new management structure being introduced. • New systems or technology being implemented. • Processes being improved or changed. • New corporate cultures being established. • Changing market focus. • Business Process Reengineering initiatives. Business process reengineering flowing from a planned intervention would normally culminate in a requirement for a further planned intervention in the form of change management to be implemented. This is required to not only ensure that end to end processes are established to ultimately culminate in sustained process improvement and competitive advantage, but also that the impact of such process changes map to the subsequent cultural and organisational change requirements. Should these entities however be undertaken against the background of a forced intervention, a new approach is required to ensure that not only processes are catered for, but also include behavioural and organisational considerations. Research hypothesis validation was conducted in two organisations of which one served as a Control Group, while the other organisation was split to form two separate and distinct research groups. Into the first research group of the latter organisation (Experimental Group B), the Transformation Process model, which forms the focus of this thesis was introduced to facilitate the implementation of business process reengineering and change management as planned interventions and affirmative action as the forced intervention. In terms of the methodology of the Transformation Process model, any process entity is required to be infused and mapped to a change entity and thereafter superimposed onto the applicable forced intervention in symbiotic unison to test the hypothesis. Into the second research group (Experimental Group A) the same interventions were implemented as in the case of Experimental Group B, however not in terms of the Transformation Process model, but in the traditional way whereby process change was followed by organisational change the latter, which included the forced intervention.