The Impact of Business Process Reengineering on Employee Productivity in Saudi Arabia Utility Sector

The Impact of Business process Reengineering (BPR) on Employee productivity
A Case Study of project Management Department in Saudi Arabia Utility Sector

Table of Contents
Table of Contents.............................................................................................................................2
Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW..............................................................................................3
2.1 Introduction............................................................................................................................3
2.2 BPR literature: Conception and evaluation...........................................................................3
2.3 BPR in Public Sector Organizations......................................................................................9
2.4 Dominant Perspective..........................................................................................................15
2.5 BPR resources......................................................................................................................21
2.6 BPR Depth and Breadth.......................................................................................................22
2.7 BPR implementation Problem.............................................................................................24
2.8 Summary..............................................................................................................................25
2.8.2 Implication........................................................................................................................26
Chapter 3: Methodology................................................................................................................27
3.1 Introduction..........................................................................................................................27
3.2 Research paradigm...............................................................................................................27
3.3 Ontological and Epistemological Positioning.....................................................................29
3.4 Methodological choices.......................................................................................................31
3.5. Understanding research methods:.......................................................................................34
3.5.1 Discussion on Qualitative Method:..................................................................................35
3.5.2. Quantitative method:.......................................................................................................35
3.6 Reason behind Questionnaire Instruments:.........................................................................36
3.7 Different data Collection Methods and Procedures:............................................................37
3.8 Data Analysis Approaches and Tools:.................................................................................38
3.9 Summary:.............................................................................................................................40
Chapter 4: Results and Discussion................................................................................................40
Introduction....................................................................................................................................40
Demographics................................................................................................................................41
Gender of participants....................................................................................................................41
Educational qualifications of the participants................................................................................43
Professional Career........................................................................................................................43
Re-engineering initiatives of the oil and gas sector in Saudi Arabia.............................................44
Staff Development.........................................................................................................................46

Strategy..........................................................................................................................................47
Technology....................................................................................................................................48
Organization..................................................................................................................................50
Impact of BPR on employee productivity.....................................................................................50
Impact of the Staff engineering.....................................................................................................52
Impact of Technology....................................................................................................................52
Impact of strategy..........................................................................................................................53
Impact of the business processes Re-engineering from a management perspective.....................53
Challenges confronted in Saudi Arabia oil and gas industry reengineering efforts......................54
Reference List................................................................................................................................56

Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Introduction
This particular literature review states various studies on different business process
reengineering (BPR). The business process reengineering identifies various dimensions of
performance that have been employees during the evaluation that have been carried out before
studies. The study evaluates the performance changes after applying BPR; it also evaluates
various major theoretical perspectives that underpin the studies that have been carried out. The
review is carried out in such a way that the main points of a literature review regarding BPR are
carried out at first and then the literature of BPR literature.
This particular chapter is divided into four parts. The introduction is a part of these
chapters. Section one discusses regarding the evolution and conception of BPR. The second
section presents a literature review on the topic of BPR in numerous public organizations. The
third section provides a summary of the review that has been carried out and it highlights the
implications of the current study.
2.2 BPR literature: Conception and evaluation
Business processes are a focus to the community of information technology since around
1960s. This is because IR has been used for automating various processes. The development as
well as the deployment of numerous sophisticated information systems and infrastructure of IT
in order to automate various business processes, the benefits have not been realized (Davenport
and Short 1990; Hammer 1990). Due to this the process of non value adding and processes that
are flawed has been very simple. This circumstance has been called for the improved business

process management, with the help of one particular response of BPR which is an innovation that
is process based. The BPR had been first introduced in 1990 (Davenport 2008). At that particular
time the BPR was considered as an in ovation which follows a process base. BPR was being used
in a dramatic improvement in the performance with the help of a radical redesign of various
business processes that are underlying (Davenport and Short 1990; Hammer 1990). According to
Hammer and Champy BPR had been defined as “the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign
of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical contemporary measures of
performance such as a cost, quality, service and speed”. BPR has been defined differently by
different authors. Similarly, Davenport (1993) had defined BPR ‘radical redesign of broad,
cross-functional business processes with the objective in the order of magnitude performance
gains, often with the aid of Information Technology’. As per Teng, Grover and Fiedler (1994)
BPR is defined as ‘the critical analysis and radical redesign of existing business processes to
achieve breakthrough improvements in performance measures’
The definitions that are mentioned above share some common concepts regarding
business radical, redesign, processes and some dramatic improvements. It can be understood for
the definition that the main target of BPR is considered as a business process and the goal of
BPR is innovation in businesses that are process based. It also aims in transforming the processes
of the businesses (Davenport 1993). The provided definitions provide an idea that the
organizations can be managed properly and the performance can also be improved to great extent
by indentifying strategic business processes, redesign the processes if necessary and then support
them with the help o organizational and technological enablers (Davenport 1993; Hammer and
Champy 1993). According to various concepts of organizations, BPR comprises of six basic
concepts. These concepts are very important for achieving the expected dramatic improvement

(Hammer and Champy 1993; Davenport and Stoddard 1994; Linden 1994). The six basic
concepts include fundamental rethinking, business process orientation, radical redesign, top
down, IT enablement and dramatic improvement. The details of this description of all the six
parts are provided in chapter three.
Since the time the concept of BPR has been introduced numerous firms have adopted the
concepts within some time. The discourses’ of BPR has also grown very rapidly as well as
exponentially (Wang 2008). Along with the success stories, the literature review on BPR shows
that various projects that have been implemented using BPR have been failed to provide
expected results, it dues the difficulties that meet the demand of various radical redesign which
reengineering should start with a clean slate, it should also challenge the quo of the status (Feller
and Bentley 2001; Wang 2008). When numerous projects that were done with the help of
concepts of BPR have failed, the researches started to question regarding the strategies followed
by BPR and started criticizing the principles of BPR. It had been argued that the principles of
BPR have forgotten the human element in a business. It was also said that the clean state
approach was completely unrealistic (Feller and Bentley 2001; Wang 2008). The maximum
criticize BPR has been received in its technology used and the central focus of its efficiency. The
disregard of the human dimension of BPR was also criticized. This means that the BPR was
accused of dehumanizing the working environment by increasing the managerial and IT based
system control as well as serving in the form of a tool which reduces major part of the
workforce(Feller and Bentley 2001; Wang 2008). According to Davenport, “the rock that
reengineering has foundered on is simple: people. Reengineering treated the people inside
companies as if they were just so many bits and bytes, interchangeable parts to be reengineered.
But no one wants to “be reengineered”” (Davenport 1995b, p. 70).

Various stories where BPR has failed and received criticisms in the aspects of clean state
approach and the treatment of human element, has resulted in practitioners and researchers to
stop the usage of BPR label. It has also resulted in devising new labeling and conceptualizations
(Wang 2008). This has resulted in generation of three conceptualizations that are BPR related:
business process change (BPT) (Guha et al. 1997; Kettinger, Teng and Guha 1997), business
process management (BPM) (Alsaigh 2010; Hammer 2010; Rosemann and Brocke 2010),
business process transformation (BPT) (Grover and Markus 2008; Zwass 2008). Casement of the
provided conceptualizations against the concepts that have been provided above distinguishes the
actual version of BPR from the others.
An example of this is that the BPC is a comprehensive approach to business process
management. This approach acknowledges a continuous process of improving business
processes to the radical redesign of various processes in order to achieve dramatic improvements
in the processes (Guha et al. 1997; Kettinger, Teng and Guha 1997). Besides improving the
business processes, the BPC also applies to top down as well as bottom up approaches. It also
focuses on organizational and changes management aspects like strategy, people, structure,
culture issues instead of enabling technology (Guha et al. 1997). According to Guha et al. (1997,
p. 121) BPC is an initiative of organization which helps in designing processes for achieving
business goals, along with improving the business goals, it also improves the performance of the
organization. The application of BPC improves the relation between various departments of the
organization such as people, stakeholders, technology, structure, people, management and many
more. The initiatives might range in process improvement to a new process design which is
contingent upon the degree of particular change that has been undertaken in every organizational
subsystem and interaction among them.

The second concept of BPR that is related to conceptualization is BPT. It focuses on the
maturity of various business processes with the help of deep transformation of the existing
business processes (Grover and Markus 2008; Zwass 2008). The important features of BPR are
more needed for deep transformations of the present business processes. This is the result of
inter-organizational cooperation and integration for exchanging the knowledge and data (Zwass
2008), development in the electronic business, development in the electronic government and it
also comprises of implantation of enterprise resource planning and systems that are knowledge
based (Wang 2008; Alsaigh 2010). Grover and Markus (2008) have been argued that the
transformation of the process in order to improve the performance of an organization is more
important nowadays than the previous days, because the processes have been used for numerous
times and they have been very old and this requires the processes to be renovated. It also checks
the various kind of article along with investigating with the given relationship with BPR. It also
checks the organizational performance in the context of the private sector. With respect to
research method employed, much of article makes use of the case study method, the survey
method and various conceptual studies. The given lesson is mainly inclusive of various
advantages of BPR success for completing and sustaining the outcome of BPR outcome. It is
mainly done for understanding the continuous improvement plan. It mainly highlights the need to
research which aims to investigate the overall effect of BPR at the level of output. The measure
of organizational performance in the given public sector helps are mainly differentiated from the
private sector. There is a need for proper research for fulfilling the gaps. Implementation of the
radical BPR is not possible and feasible in case of the public sector. This leads to the fact that the
management of the project gets performed with the help of the better management of the project.