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Factors characterising the maturity of BPR programmes1

Dr R S Maull

School of Business and Economics, University of Exeter, Exeter EX4 4PU

Professor D R Tranfield

Cranfield School of Management, Cranfield, Beds MK43 0AL

Dr W Maull

School of Education and Life Long Learning, University of Exeter, Exeter.

Abstract

This paper addresses the implementation of Business Process Re-engineering programmes in 33 public and

private organisations wishing to improve performance. By reviewing the existing literature, the research

presented here began by identifying 10 dimensions along which BPR projects might be measured. This research

then uses these dimensions to investigate two research questions Firstly, it examines the relationships between

these ten dimensions to reveal whether or not configurational approaches to BPR programme exist. Secondly, it

examines the relationship between these ten dimensions and the maturity of a BPR implementation. The paper

uses factor analysis based on quantitative data to address these questions. The factor analysis identified three

independent aspects of BPR implementation: strategy, process and cost. We then used these terms in labelling

three characteristic approaches, Strategic BPR, Process focussed BPR and Cost focussed BPR. To investigate

causality we re-visited seven of the original organisations which had been in the early stages of implementation.

Preliminary results indicate that managers might avoid the naturalistic tendency towards slow or stalled BPR

maturity by intervening in a strategic sense at an earlier stage of implementation, thus bringing an organisation

to a mature BPR programme more quickly.

INTRODUCTION

Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) as an approach to performance

improvement was established in 1990 (Hammer 1990, Davenport and Short 1990). It

is a controversial approach with many authors highly critical of some of its methods

and assumptions. For example, Grint and Case (1998) in their critique of the

bellicose language associated with BPR, claim that it is a US led management

consultancy approach that is a reaction against the dominant Japanese

management practices. For Grint and Case BPR is associated with a violent

1 This paper results from research work carried out on two EPSRC grants, GR/K67328, ‘UK experiences in business process

re-engineering: a scoping study’ and GR/L41479 “A methodology for the re-engineering of business processes”. We acknowledge the considerable amount of work carried out by Drs Stephen Childe and Barry Mills in collecting some of this data.

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rhetoric. They quote Hammer as using phrases such as “taking an axe and a

machine gun to your existing organisation”… “re-engineering will require a lobotomy”

and “if senior management is serious about reengineering they will shoot you”. This

is then somewhat paradoxically linked to a utopian view “re-engineering can lead

you to a promised land”. De Cock (1997) also draws heavily on the discourse of

BPR. He claims that if BPR is to influence organisations its “meaning must be

socially negotiated within the context of particular concrete activities”. Critically

appraising the discourse and rhetoric of BPR is important, for it contributes to

definition and scoping of the field. This research can be seen as complementary in

that it adopts a practitioner sensitive view, using terminology drawn from extensive

empirical work in a variety of public and private organisations . In this sense the

work reflects a distinctly managerial perspective.

Further controversy surrounds whether or not BPR, as an approach to performance

improvement has been successful. Some claim success given the right conditions

(Harvey 1994) whilst others claim failure rates as high as 70% (Laudon and Laudon

1998). Unsurprisingly, some have described it as nothing more than a passing fad

(Verespej 1995), a view not shared by Francis and Macintosh (1997). In their view

this was because organisations were being required to move away from the

hierarchical, functional, command and control management model which had been

dominant, and BPR was a fundamental tool contributing to that re-organisation.

They foresaw that BPR would undergo name changes and modifications to its

structure and approach, but concluded “it cannot be ignored” (p361).

As Francis and Macintosh (op cit) predicted, interest in BPR has remained high in

both academic and practitioner communities. In 1998 IJOPM produced a special

edition on BPR (vol 18 no 9&10). Through 2000 to 2002 there have continued to be

regular contributions in the journal relating to BPR in (see for example, Belmiro,

Gardiner, Simmons, and Rentes (2000), Kuwaiti and Kay (2000), Silvestro and

Westley (2002)). Overall, there have been over 200 academic papers related to BPR

since 1999 across a range of journals and from several different management

disciplines and themes, including change management, quality management and

logistics. The practitioner community has also continued to adopt BPR. For example,

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McCabe and Knights (2000) state that “far from having died, re-engineering is

increasingly being used by management to rationalise and describe a variety of

innovations irrespective of their content.” (p 74)

However, much of the recent reported work (not least those views reported in the

special edition of IJOPM) concentrates on different facets of BPR. Predominately

this has tended to focus on the ‘technology push’ aspects, for example the many

articles on Enterprise Resource Planning and BPR (Soliman and Youseff, 1998;

Martin and Cheung, 2000; Al-Mashari and Zairi, 2000), or has taken a strong

organisational change/human factor perspective (McAdam and Donaghy, 1999;

Zucchi and Edwards, 2000; Bright, 1999). Research integrating the various aspects

of BPR, such as Evans, Mason-Jones and Towill, 1998; Al-Mashari and Zairi, 2000,

has tended to take a theoretical approach, typically providing comprehensive

checklists with little empirical evidence, yet offering guidance for practitioners

seeking to implement BPR.

This research attempts to fill a gap in the literature on BPR which has tended to

focus on discrete aspects of BPR implementation and where it has taken a more

integrated theme has not embedded that approach with an investigation into what

has taken place in practice. This relative lack of empirical research into the

integration of the elements of BPR implementation was the inspiration for the

research reported in this paper

In some ways our study and results might be interpreted as a further example of the

importance of strategic issues in change management using a particular change

introduction vehicles. We explore this in discussion later. However, the prime focus

on business process change, which may be distinctive to BPR leads us to caution.

For example Belmiro et al (2000) found that many practitioners misunderstood the

business process element and used the term when describing generic reengineering

activities. We set out specifically to address BPR issues, and the extent to which

our results might be generalised and applied to other change vehicles remains

problematic.

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Themes and dimensions of BPR implementation

In their brief history of BPR Francis and Macintosh (1997) review some of the

discussion points associated with a BPR project. These include; labels, approaches,

tools, techniques, the definition of a business process, the role of IT and the scope

and timing of BPR projects. All of this is predicated on their view that BPR as a

subject area has yet to mature and there is still “much debate on what constitutes

BPR”. In the following year Motwani et al (1998), in an extensive review and

classification of the BPR literature, classified BPR research into four streams.

1. Definitions and overview of BPR

2. Normative studies of BPR – mainly produced by practitioners

3. Conceptual models for assessing and implementing BPR

4. Assessment and successful implementation of BPR across sectors

Motwani et al (1998) concluded by pointing out some directions for future BPR

research, stating that “managers need to know the levers of BPR that they can

manipulate to make organisational wide improvements.” To enable managers to

know this, they identified the need for further work in all four streams. We have

focussed this work on streams three and four. This paper attends to both of these

areas of need.

In examining the literature, we extracted five themes each of which has been argued

to be central to effective implementation:

Taking a strategic approach

Integrating performance measurement

Creating business process architecture

Involving human and organisational factors

Identifying the role of information technology

Each of these is discussed below.

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Taking a strategic approach

The importance of aligning any BPR project with business strategy has been

strongly emphasised in the literature. For example Guha et al (1993), Kaplan and

Murdock (1991), Harrison and Pratt (1993) and Parnaby (1993), all specify the

importance of this view.

More recent authors agree. For example Attaran and Wood (1999) in their review of

BPR case examples of success state, as a useful guideline for other firms to follow

that the “Re-engineering effort should be driven by a clearly defined strategic

mission” (p754). Pritchard and Armistead (1999) in their lessons from European

business suggest opportunities from which the practitioner community could benefit.

They place primary importance on the linking of Business Process Management

(BPM) with strategic programmes, citing BT as good practice in this area. Al-Mashari

and Zairi (1999), in their considerable review of success factors in BPR

implementation, point out that a “consideration of the strategic context of growth and

expansion, creating a top-level strategy to guide change and a careful alignment of

corporate strategy with BPR strategy are crucial to the success of the BPR efforts”

(p 93)

We considered two dimensions to be important in strategic alignment. The first was

the alignment of the BPR project within the overall business strategy (Attaran and

Wood 1999, Pritchard and Armistead 1999, Al-Mashari and Zairi 1999). This was

reflected by the degree of involvement in the project.

Dimension 1 - Strategy: (1) Localised involvement - (5) broad involvement: the

extent to which the BPR programme was a company-wide strategic initiative or a

more localised relatively low-level programme (such as one that which was

undertaken in one department or site).

The second dimension concerns the extent of the alignment of the overall business

strategy with the business environment. Strategic advantage may be seen as

predominantly determined ‘outside-in’, largely by market positioning (the “competitive

forces” perspective; Porter, 1980) or predominantly ‘inside-out’, largely by the

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exploitation of firm-specific resources (the “resource-based view”; Penrose 1959;

Rumelt 1984; Teece, 1984; Wernerfelt, 1984). This latter view has been explored in

a manufacturing context by Tranfield and Smith 1998 and Gagnon 1999).

Dimension 2 - Strategy: (1) Single point - (5) dual point: the extent to which

across the company the programme was seeking to address solely external

requirements (e.g. customer need, market need) or was also focussed on exploiting

internal competencies and developing future capabilities.

Integrating performance measurement

The requirement to develop an integrated set of performance measures that spans

all the business processes within the organisation has been proposed by Guha et al

(1993), Jones (1994) Rummler and Brache (1990) and Kaplan and Murdock (1991).

Without an integrated set of measures it is possible to optimise one area of the

business process but not the system overall. This has the effect of simply moving

the bottleneck to other business areas.

More recently Kuwaiti and Kay (2000), in an empirical study based in Bahrain,

looked at the importance of Performance Measurement Systems (PMS) in the

introduction of BPR. They suggest that “a relevant PMS (Performance Measurement

System) in the BPR context is one that takes into account the fact that people work

in teams and produce final output for a customer”. In effect, this is arguing for a PMS

that spans the whole process. They conclude their empirical study by summarising

that their results, “confirm previously unsubstantiated beliefs that any organisation

should seriously consider the development of a PMS that focuses on strategic aims

before embarking on any re-engineering projects” (p1425).

In addition to the strategic alignment of the performance measures a secondary

issue is the driving force and focus of the BPR project. For example, Chan and Peel

(1998), in their investigation into the cause and impact of re-engineering, point in

thirty-seven re-engineered organisations to the importance of both the external and

internal focus of the BPR project. In their view organisations need to rethink their

strategies to recognise that whilst the customer has the “upper hand in the

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customer/producer relationship”, this places an increasing emphasis on service

quality. Further, they recognise the importance of cost reduction in BPR, noting that

“corporate giants like GE and IBM, right down to the small entrepreneur, are looking

for ways to reduce costs”. Similarly, Attaran and Wood (1999) point out the need

and opportunities for both cost reduction and revenue growth as drivers for re-

engineering efforts.

Our review identified three dimensions under the theme of performance

measurement. The first concerns the importance of aligning performance measures

with strategic measures (Guha 1993, Jones 1994, Rummler and Brache 1990,

Kaplan and Murdoch 1991, Kuwaiti and Kay 2000)

Dimension 3 - Performance measures: (1) Localised - (5) strategic: the extent to

which the BPR project measures of performance were integrated with a company’s

critical success factors or were project based and largely independent of strategic

direction.

The second and third dimensions within performance measurement relate to the key

drivers of BPR projects, for many projects have a strong focus on either cost

reduction and/or service improvements (Chan and Peel 1998 Attaran and Wood

1998).

Dimension 4 - Cost focus: (1) little focus on cost reduction - (5) strong focus

on cost reduction: the extent to which the BPR programme was focused on cost

reduction.

Dimension 5 - Service improvement: (1) little service focus - (5) strong service

focus: the extent to which the company was explicitly intending to improve customer

service through their BPR programme.

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Creating business processes architecture

BPR differs from many other approaches to performance improvement because it

recognises that business processes span both internal and external organisational

boundaries. Indeed, the focus on business process appears to be a crucial aspect of

the novelty in BPR (Belmiro et al, 2000). A major means of extending business

process knowledge within an organisation is through business process architecture,

with such an architecture viewing all the business processes in an organisation

systemically. There are two alternative approaches to developing business process

architectures: company specific architectures and generic architectures (sometimes

sector specific). Whatever approach is adopted the emphasis is on integration

Rhodes (1994). Many have recognised the importance of defining a business

process architecture include Meyer (1993), Kaplan and Murdock (1991), Davenport

(1993) and Harvey (1994). In recent years a number of more generic business

process architectures have been made available. In a wide-ranging discussion of

enterprise reference architectures, Smart et al (2000) point out that “examples of

reference architectures can be found for Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM)

initiatives (AMICE 1993, Williams 1994), Integrated Information Systems projects

(Scheer 1992), and for Enterprise Modelling (CEN 1990). While the application

areas of these architectures are different, the unifying factor of ‘integration’ can be

identified” (p471).

Two dimensions stood out as important in creating process architecture in BPR

projects. The first concerned the extent of deployment (Belmiro 2000, Meyer 1993.

Kaplan and Murdoch 1991, Davenport 1993, Harvey 1994)

Dimension 6 - Process architecture: (1) none - (5) widely deployed: the extent to

which a company had defined and deployed a process architecture.

The second dimension concerned the extent to which the design of the architecture

was system-wide (Smart 2000, Rhodes 1994).

Dimension 7 - Process architecture: (1) Isolated unit - (5) Systemic: the extent

to which a company had designed a process architecture that encompassed the

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whole organisation and the interconnections between business processes, or had

only emphasised a local and isolated process architecture.

Involving human and organisational factors

Al-Mashari and Zairi (1999) state that “successful BPR implementation requires

fundamental organisational change in terms of organisational structure, culture and

management processes”. Changes in organisational structure and management

have been addressed by Kaplan and Murdock (1991), Hirschhorn & Gilmore (1992),

Earl (1994), and Harrison and Pratt (1993). Suggested improvements include the

creation of Process Owner Teams (POTs), changes in organisational structure and

new work methods. Biazzo (1998) also suggests that one aspect of BPR is that

“change is revolutionary” consisting of “the passage from functional units to process

teams”. He goes on to point out that “the process team represents the application of

classical organizational theory through the creation of self-contained tasks” (p1004)

A second dimension associated with human and organisational factors in BPR is the

issue of changing organisational culture (see for example McCabe,1998). Al-

Mashari and Zairi (1999) advocate that one of the key factors in incorporating BPR

within an organisation is the “cultural adjustment techniques needed by

management to facilitate the insertion of newly designed processes and structures

into working practice”. They argue that empowerment as part of a BPR project will

push decisions down the levels of the organisation and “establish a culture in which

staff feel more responsible and accountable”(p89). Ahmed and Simintiras (1996)

agree, concluding that BPR programmes are likely to lead to “changed

organisational culture; a culture driven by a new agenda and behaviour” (p86)

We concluded that two key dimensions were important concerning human factors.

The first concerned changes to the organisational structure (Al-Mashari and Zairi

1999, Kaplan and Murdoch 1991, Hirschhorn and Gilmore 1992, Earl 1994, Harrison

and Pratt 1993, Biazzo 2000).

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Dimension 8 - Structural reconfiguration: (1) sustain existing - (5) change

existing: the extent to which the BPR programme aimed to change the reporting

structure of the organisation.

The second dimension addressed the deeper underlying platform, the organisational

culture and its relationship to the BPR programme (McCabe 1998, Al-Mashari and

Zairi 1999, Ahmed and Simintiras 1996). The concept of culture is a complex and

potentially problematic construct. Consequently, we adopted Schein’s (1984);

definition of culture “the pattern of basic assumptions that a given group has

invented, discovered or developed in learning to cope with its problems of internal

integration and external adaptation” (p3).

Dimension 9 - Cultural change: (1) sustain existing - (5) change existing: the

extent to which a company sought to change culture through the BPR programme.

Identifying the role of information technology

The crucial role of Information Technology (IT) in BPR programmes has been

identified by many authors. Davenport and Short [1990], Grover et al [1993] and

Dennis et al [1994], have all approached BPR from an IT perspective. In case

studies Cole et al [1993], Housel et al [1993] and Short and Venkatraman [1992]

describe successful applications of IT underpinning the business processes in

Milacron, Pacific Bell and Baxter's Healthcare respectively.

On the whole, the role of IT in BPR implementation has been thought important but

also contentious. For example, Soliman and Youssef (1998) have pointed to the

crucial importance of IT within the BPR implementation. They argue that “BPR relies

heavily on the use of it to create radically different working methods to achieve

improvements”, and that “in BPR IT is an active agent of change” (p886). On the

other hand, however, Ahmed and Simintiras (1996) point out “increasingly studies

have found that information technology does not feature as a critical enabler of re-

engineering success” (p86).

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Given that our investigation centred on the success of the implementation of BPR

programmes, we concluded that our focus should be on the extent to which IT

actually enabled or constrained programmes (Ahmed and Simintiras 1996).

Dimension 10 - Effect of IT: (1) did not enable - (5) enabler: this indicates the

extent to which IT had or had not been used to enable the BPR programme.

BPR MATURITY

The final object of the study was BPR maturity. We grouped the organisations into

one of five positions:

Group 1 – represented those organisations who were in the early phase of project

planning. These organisations were typified by one company who reported that “Big

boy consultants were telling organisations to re-engineer their processes”. They

were considering what type of project to launch and which components the project

should have. In their case Information Technology was crucial and they were still

thinking about the appropriate strategy.

Alternatively, some BPR projects were at an early stage because they had become

bogged down by internal political issues. One typical company complained that “we

are dealing with different cultures, one definition of a process will be different to

another, and that doesn’t matter on paper but when we want to bring two big

departments together we are going to have a problem. It’s not something we can

enforce, we must think of it as a business opportunity”.

Organisations in this grouping constituted the least mature group insofar as they

were in the first phase of their BPR project. They were developing the project plan,

defining the project goals and objectives, specifying tasks, resources and budgets.

They were considering the potential obstacles and barriers and the general scope of

the project.

Group 2 – these organisations had moved on from project definition and had begun

executing their programme. This grouping represented organisations which we

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characterised as ‘work-in-progress’ in that they had carried out some activity but

which had not yet gone on to complete the project.

A typical example was a company who had recently begun a 14 month project

looking at the feasibility of BPR. In their case consultants had recently completed

four months As-Is modelling and identified some costs and potential bottlenecks.

This had been a limited feasibility study which had stalled slightly “as the board

cannot see their jobs in the new process oriented structure”.

Group 3 – these organisations had moved on from execution and had recently

completed the BPR project or were in the final stages of implementation.

A typical example was a company whose BPR programme had developed from a

previous Total Quality Management programme. Since then they had tried to adopt

what they termed managing performance through processes. They were heavily

focusing on deploying the process architecture and target measures for processes.

Due to the size of the business this was complicated and time consuming. They

were completing the roll-out of the new process and the associated employee

training at the time of our data gathering.

Group 4 – these organisations had moved on from a completed BPR project and

were in the process of capturing the knowledge gained.

A good example of this was an organisation that had already achieved significant

benefits of £4.5m from the re-engineering of their order fulfilment process. They

were now taking this forward and considering the implications for process owners,

process team leaders, process re-engineering managers, process metrics and the

effect on customer relations. However their biggest concern was the impact on

organisational culture. They described their organisation as 2000 employees who all

think for themselves, where if they spot an opportunity the will take it and run with it.

Their concern was that a complete re-engineering of the whole business might ruin

that culture.

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Group 5 – these organisations had moved beyond assessing what they had learnt

from their BPR project and were using the knowledge gained to re-engineer the

whole business.

A typical example was the company who had very recently completed a large-scale

business wide re-engineering programme. In their terms the project attacked

process and culture at the same time. That is their re-engineering had the technical

elements of a process wide infrastructure, strongly underpinned with an object

based IT system. This had also affected the organisation structural arrangements.

They explained “there were 36 grades, 20 layers of management, now there are 4

role types”. All of this was driven from a clear mission of improved customer service.

There are some limitations associated with the notion of project maturity as outlined

and defined above. Firstly, the categorisation is necessarily imprecise. Ideally, we

would have preferred to tightly define maturity using an objective measure such as

elapsed time, number of staff involved, size of budget etc. However, some

organisations had been considering their project plans, budgets, staffing, facilities

etc for many months, whilst others in the same timescale had pushed through to

implementation. Some organisations with large teams and budgets were still at the

outset, other organisations had a complete implementation with a smaller tighter knit

team. For some this might be explained as a function of organisational size, whilst

for others, such variation may have more to do with an organisations readiness to

change. In considering how maturity might be measured, we toyed with the idea of

combining elapsed time, size of team etc with some weighting for readiness to

change. However, this led to even further definitional problems and would have

added considerable complexity to the research design and resulting instrumentation.

In the event we opted to take a phenomenological approach and asked individual

organisations to estimate their own assessment on programme maturity using the

structure and definitions provided above. This gave an overall judgement which we

checked later from our interview data. In only one case of the thirty-three responses

was a significant incompatibility found between these two datasets.

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The second problem was that the movement along the maturity axis may not be

linear. Thus, for example, if a variable doubled on average for each step in the

maturing process the linear correlation would be weak. Any assumption that the

phases of the maturing process are equispaced on the maturity axis must therefore

be treated with some caution, the axis representing an ordinal measure only.

Recognising this, we rejected the mechanistic methods of linear correlation for the

more sophisticated approach of analysing the scatter plots, grouped by maturity

category, and plotting the movement of the group mean. This was then plotted

against the three independent axis which resulted from the factor analysis (see

later). In short we made no assumptions about the linearity of maturity or otherwise

and have carried out no analysis which depends on the assumption of linearity.

RESEARCH METHOD

Research questions

Given that we set out to identify empirically the characteristics of BPR

implementation we developed two research questions.

What are the relationships (if any) between the dimensions identified?

That is, are all the dimensions independent or do they group, and if they group

what are the characteristics of these groups.

What are the relationships (if any) between the dimensions identified

and the maturity of a BPR implementation?

If the dimensions group, are there any relationships between the groups and the

maturity of the BPR implementation.

Answers to these questions are important for both industry and academia. For

industry they may provide some guidance on why some BPR implementations are

more successful than others. For academia answers to these questions might

integrate the various dimensions of BPR to go beyond the rather piecemeal and

discrete approaches which have so far focused on IT, human factors, process

architectures etc.

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Sample of organisations

A wide variety of organisations that had identified themselves as implementing BPR

(either by presenting experiences at commercial conferences, publishing in the daily

or business press, or sending representatives to BPR practitioner workshops) were

selected. These included organisations from the service, construction and

manufacturing sectors, as well as organisations from the public sector. Sizes of

company ranged from 500 to over 170,000 employees, although most of the

organisations were large (> 1000 employees). The sample included both

organisations with programmes of considerable longevity (over 5 years old) and

those who were at the earliest planning stages.

Because this research was essentially exploratory in nature, it was thought

appropriate to use organisations drawn from a range of sectors (Motwani et al,1998)

to search for more significant issues which might have general significance for those

initiating and implementing BPR projects. However, given the limited nature of the

sample, we thought it not appropriate to examine our data from a sectoral

perspective, focusing instead on the relationship between project maturity and the

ten dimensions outlined earlier.

The list of participating organisations by sector is shown in Table 2 below:

Process Industries 7

Manufacturing 9

Service Sector 11

Public Sector 3

Retail 1

Utility 1

Construction 1

Table 1 by Industry Sector

Unit of analysis

The Unit of analysis was the individual company and specifically the BPR project

within the individual company.

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Data collection

We used the ten dimensions as variables in a data collection instrument. We asked

representatives from each organisation to locate their organisation on a five-point

ordinal scale with respect to each dimension. Further discussion of how the data

was collected and moderated is provided below (see research methods). An

example of using the Ordinal scale to develop a comparison for business process

architecture is given in Figure 1.

INSERT FIGURE 1 HERE

This fieldwork was conducted in thirty-three organisations. In all, it consisted of an

interview with an individual or team who had overall responsibility for the BPR

project within the organisation. The purpose of the fieldwork was twofold, each

company visit enabled us to build a brief case study, and also to gather the

information to locate the company on each of the ten dimensions.

Within each organisation representatives of the BPR team were asked to describe

their project using a ‘time-line’, beginning with an explanation of why they began the

project and outlining the major stages within it. If any of the ten key dimensions had

not been covered by the end of the interview, then the respondents were asked to

comment on those specifically, with respondents self-reporting their position. ‘Time-

line’ data was recorded and extensive fieldnotes were kept.

The ‘time line’ method focused on which activities were undertaken and when, and

the perceived rationale and purpose for each. Where possible, this perceptual data

was checked and validated with company documentation and historical record. The

advantage of such a data collection technique was that it allowed respondents to

unveil their implementation data in a natural fashion by ‘telling the BPR story’.

Recording the data also facilitated validation at the end of the interview when

respondents were asked to check through the research material for factual

inaccuracies or other required changes. This served to increase the quality of data

collected.

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To structure the data gathering we also used a set of pro-formas based on the ten

dimensions. A team of three experienced researchers carried out the whole data

collection exercise. This ensured considerable consistency within the data collection

process, and helped the research team in contrasting perceptions of programmes

one with another, thus introducing a further element of validation into the research.

It is also important to note that in the first instance, it was left to the organisations

themselves to decide their position on each scale. Later, the research team

examined these responses, and based on comparisons across organisations

assessed their relative positions. However, only in one case was a company’s

maturity reclassified, a re-categorisation from a ‘three’ to a ‘one’. This company saw

themselves as having completed a BPR project, but the consensus within the

research team was that the project was considered to be still at the project planning

stage. Further, there were five other minor changes to company results on the

dimensions (i.e. a change of one scale point). In total, something less than 2% of

the data (six scores of 360) was adjusted.

Data Analysis

Factor analysis

Factor analysis is a technique both for detecting underlying patterns of correlation in

data, i.e. for grouping the variables, and for reducing a large number of variables to

a smaller number of components. In this case, these may be used to re-examine the

cases. It is an excellent tool in theory building, since it does not need any a priori

assumptions about the cases or variables involved, and deals robustly with a diverse

sample. For these reasons, we adopted factor analysis to address the two research

questions identified earlier.

The ten variables were analysed using Principal Component Analysis within the

software package SPSS. The correlation and significance matrices are shown in

Appendix 1 and Appendix 2.

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The standard tests for sampling adequacy were applied and yielded a value of .668

for the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy and an approximate Chi-

Square of 190.652 for Bartlett's Test of Sphericity, which, with df of 45 is significant

at p<0.001. The data was thus accepted as suitable. (Hair et al, 1984).

Three components corresponded to eigenvalues of greater than unity, so a rotated

solution of three components was obtained using VARIMAX. The loadings of the

rotated solution are shown in Appendix 3, with values <0.3 suppressed. Figure 2

below shows the factor composition in graphic form. Appendix 3 shows that

Strategy: dual/single point loads negatively on Factor 3, so for the purposes of the

diagram only, (and to help understanding considerably) the signs of the variables

composing this component have been reversed. The discussion which follows has

the direction of Factor 3 in the same sense as in Appendix 3.

HF: Culture Strategy: Loc/all PM: Service

HF: OD PA: red/sys

( - ) PM: Cost IT

Strategy: single/dual

point

PM: loc/strat PA: deploy

Factor 2: Process - based BPR

Factor 3: Cost BPR

Factor 1: Strategic BPR

Key to abbreviations HF: Human Factors Loc/all: localised all PM: Performance Measures Loc/strat: localised strategic PA deploy: Process architecture extent of deployment HF OD: Human Factors organisational design PA red/sys: Process architecture reductionist/systemic

Figure 2 Venn diagram showing factor composition

From Figure 2, we can identify three types of BPR project from the factor analysis of

the data.

Type 1 we have called strategic BPR (SBPR). SBPR combines a focus on the

changing of organisational culture, with an inclusive approach to developing the

strategic objectives of the project and a BPR project focused on improving service

19

delivery. Additionally, the performance measures for the project are strategically

aligned, and the business process architecture is widely deployed. Also, but of

lesser importance, the strategic focus includes an element of competency

development.

In short, a strategically aligned project with a focus on improving service delivery

which includes everyone in changing their attitudes and behaviour.

Type 2 we have called Process focused BPR (PBPR). PBPR includes an attempt to

change the organisational design to focus more on the business process (e.g. the

use of process owner teams) with a systemic process architecture – a clear

concentration on the process. This is combined with two less important issues, the

performance measures for the project are strategically aligned and the business

process architecture is widely deployed and to a lesser extent again the strategic

focus includes an element of competency development.

Type 3 we have termed Cost reduction BPR (CBPR). CBPR has a focus on cost

reduction, where IT is a considerable constraint and the strategic focus is single

point, i.e. responding to market requirements. In effect, this might be understood as

the much criticised downsizing BPR approach, focusing on an immediate market

need.

Integrating factors with groups

Next, we brought together the factor analysis with the analysis of company project

maturity. These results are shown in the scatter plots in Appendix 4.

We developed a mean for each of the factors, SBPR, PBPR and CBPR for each

group. To re-iterate;

Group 1 - represented “still thinking”

Group 2 - organisations which had carried out some activity

Group 3 - organisations which had very recently finished a BPR programme

Group 4 - organisations which had finished a programme and were in the process of

capturing the knowledge gained

20

Group 5 - organisations which were using the knowledge gained from the BPR

programme to re-engineer the whole business.

Applying the results of the factor analysis to the maturity of BPR groupings produces

the following summary tables.

Group Mean

Factor 1

score

(SBPR)

Mean

Factor 2

score

(PBPR)

Mean

Factor 3

score

(CBPR)

1 -0.99 -0.84 -0.04

2 -0.19 0.10 0.17

3 -0.08 -0.10 0.23

4 0.67 0.55 0.27

5 0.92 0.31 -0.88

Table 2 Group mean factor scores

SBPR PBPR CBPR

Group 1 Low Low Medium

Group 2 Medium Medium Medium- High

Group 3 Medium Medium Medium- High

Group 4 Medium High Medium - High

Group 5 High High Low

Table 3 Summary of Findings

Tables 2 and 3 show that as organisations move along the maturity axis they

increase the extent of SBPR and PBPR whilst decreasing the extent of CBPR. This

indicates that the more mature BPR projects have a strategic alignment and a

process focus (through process architecture and Process Owner Teams) whilst the

less mature programmes are focusing on responding to market needs and cost

reduction.

21

However, the data is worthy of a more intensive analysis. Investigating the three

scatter plots in Figure 4 (see below) we can observe that in the SBPR/PBPR (2a)

scatter plot that the progression between the groups 1 through 4 is positive and

almost linear on factors 1 and 2. That is, as a company progresses along the

maturity axis it tends to show increasing levels of SBPR and PBPR. There are two

major changes. In moving from group 1 to group 2 there is a substantial increase in

PBPR and an increase in SBPR. In moving from group 3-4 there is a jump in SBPR

activity and a smaller increase in PBPR activity. That is, organisations in group 4

exhibit much more of a strategic focus than organisations in group 3. In moving from

group 4 to 5 there is a very marginal increase in strategic activity and a small

regression of PBPR. So how can this movement from group 4 to group 5 be

explained?

The analysis of second and third scatter plots (2b and 2c) provide the explanation. In

the SBPR/CBPR scatter plot we can observe that the relationship is very marginally

positive and almost linear for groups 1 through 4 i.e that is there is a very slight

increase in cost focus as organisations move through maturity. However, the

relationship between groups 4 and 5 is nearly orthogonal to the 1,2,3,4 progression.

That is organisations in Group 5 completely lose their cost focus. In the third scatter

plot PBPR/CBPR there is a similar finding. Group 1-4 have an almost linear

progression with the movement between groups 4-5 being almost orthogonal to the

relationship between groups 1-4. Indeed in this case there is also a small regression

in PBPR, as can be observed in Figure 4 below.

4.00

Maturity

Group means 5.00 3.00 2.00 1.00

Factor 1 (SBPR) Fig 2b

Fa

cto

r 3 (

CB

PR

)

1 2

3 4

5

Fa

cto

r 3 (

CB

PR

)

Factor 2 (PBPR) Fig 2c

1 3 4

5

2

Fa

cto

r 2 (

PB

PR

) 2

1

3

4

5

Factor 1 (SBPR) Fig 2a

Figure 4 Scatter plots of organisations according to BPR maturity on Factors 1, 2, and 3

22

In summary, as organisations progress through stages of maturity 1, 2 and 3 then

they increase their strategic and process focus substantially whilst slightly increasing

their cost focus. Organisations in this stage of progression are focusing on strategic

alignment and organising around business processes. From 3 to 4 the major

movement is in the extent of the strategic focus with some increase in process

focus. From 4 to 5 there is effectively no increase in strategic focus and slight fall

back in process focus and a major regression in cost focus. Our view was that these

issues were particularly interesting in that they resonated and have similarities with

research and practitioner accounts concerning the maturity of performance initiatives

over the last 25 years in manufacturing (see discussion below).

There main limitation with factor analysis is that it essentially static. It provides a

correlation analysis which enables an explanation of a snapshot of the phenomenon

under investigation. It does not suggest causation and so is in no sense predictive.

These are important concerns, for if a company wishes to become more mature in

its BPR project what steps should it take?

Further interviews

We decided to revisit organisations and re-interview their management teams to see

whether or not they had made any progress on their projects since our initial contact.

We chose our organisations on the basis of theoretical sampling, including some

who had a low score (level 1) and some who had scored at the intermediate level (2

or 3) on the maturity axis. Our rationale for this was that there would be little point in

further exploring organisations with higher scores (fully mature programmes) as they

would have had little opportunity to progress further. However, our intention was to

include both low and intermediate scoring organisations in order to identify whether

or not there was a difference in the final performance between the two.

Choosing organisations for the follow-up research reflects the nature and difficulty of

empirical research in organisations. Eleven out of the original thirty-three

organisations had either merged or been taken over. A further three organisations

were excluded as they were already in group 4 or 5. Of the remaining Nineteen we

23

chose seven organisations who were in a variety of different positions from their

group means on the factors. We looked for outliers. Appendix 5 shows initial

positions of organisations revisited relative to group means on factors 1, 2 and 3.

Organisations A-G all have differences from the group mean on at least one factor,

except for company F. This company provided a model for a typical group 3

company.

The original configuration on the three factors is shown in Column 2 Table 4 below.

The table is summarised from Appendix 5, which shows the initial positions of

organisations revisited relative to group means on factors 1, 2 and 3. We re-

interviewed the seven organisations and asked them to outline the extent to which

their original BPR programme had matured. The following table summarises their

position.

Company Configuration of factors*

Initial

Group

Group at

follow-up

interview SBPR PBPR CBPR

Company A high very low very

low

1 1

Company B very low close to

the mean

close

to the

mean

1 1

Company C low slightly

high

low 1 1

Company D low slightly

high

low 1 1

Company E mid very high high 2 3

Company F middle

ranking

on all

3 3

Company G medium medium low 3 3

Table 4 Re-visited organisations , comparison of original and subsequent

positions.

24

Taken as a whole, organisations A, B, C and D did not progress on the maturity of

their projects, although their combination of factors is interesting. On the original

analysis Organisations B, C and D were close to the mean or higher than their group

mean on PBPR, whilst being lower on SBPR. Company A was the opposite, higher

than its group mean on SBPR and lower on PBPR. This suggests that for

progression it is necessary to have latent potential in both SPBR and PBPR. It is

insufficient to have potential in just one of these.

Company E had a high PBPR and had completed a project, moving on to stage 3.

Looking at Figure 5 it can be seen that compared to their group mean they were a

strong outlier on PBPR and slightly backward of the group 2 mean on SBPR. This

suggests that they compensated for their mid ranking in strategic alignment with a

focus on process changes and cost reduction. Whilst this has led to progression, it

will be interesting to re-visit this company yet again, as this research has indicated

that a dynamic more toward SBPR is crucial for the movement from maturity stages

3-4.

Company F, which ranked very much in the middle of the maturity classification, had

stayed still and not progressed. An analysis of its position suggests that this is as a

consequence of a lack of sufficient strategic direction and alignment.

Company G achieved a medium score on SBPR and PBPR and low on CBPR. From

the earlier analysis our prediction would have been that it had insufficient latent

potential to move group 3 to group 4. The follow-up work indicated that it had

remained as a group 3 company. The key to the group 4 from group 3 movement is

the increase in SBPR. That is, organisations in group 4 exhibit much more of a

strategic focus than organisations in group 3. Company G had just not put enough

effort into their SBPR activity.

There are some tentative conclusions we can draw about this investigation into

causality. For organisations at the outset of their BPR project, the results suggest

that having a latent potential in either PBBR (Company C) or SBPR (Company A) is

25

insufficient in itself. It is necessary to have latent potential in both. For organisations

in the middle of implementation (groups 2 and 3) having a latent potential in PBPR

has led one company to progress. For the others we would have predicted that they

would remain in the same maturity group and they have done so.

What issues for management can we draw from this? Any conclusions must be

tentative given the difficulties in re-visiting programmes after 2-3 years (although

most of the four that were active had only recently closed the project), and the

constraints of a small sample. However we believe there are a number of points

worthy of discussion.

DISCUSSION

This research has investigated the phenomenon of BPR from a change

management perspective, using empirical work to examine the ways in which

managers have re-engineered their organisations toward the end of

performance improvement. It has identified three key factors, combinations

of which can be used to characterise sub-types of BPR. In this sense the

findings offer a first step in ‘mapping the field’ of approaches to BPR

implementation. The three factors offer a language which characterises BPR

programmes through the identification of predominant characteristics, in much

the same way that other performance improvement initiatives have been

‘mapped’ for academic and practitioner use (e.g. Smith, Tranfield et al 1994,

Bessant and Francis 1999). The purpose and potential outcome of taking

such a ‘strategic’ research approach is to facilitate understanding and

discussion among both academic and practitioner communities.

Whilst the factor analysis and the associated taxonomy process is significant

and important, the most interesting aspect of this work concerns the relative

movement and strength of these factors in the maturing of BPR programmes.

In other words, what is of critical importance is an identification and

discussion of the maturity dynamics of BPR programmes, their foci at

different stages of development, and the evolutionary trajectories upon which

they embark.

26

A further point to be made concerning this research, and particularly its

implications for managers, results from the empirically led nature of the work.

The taxonomy of approaches developed is essentially context free. We had

no preconceptions about the types of BPR project we might find (if any) in

practice. Indeed, the classification of types of BPR project was completed

after all the data had been collected. We were therefore unable to anticipate

which combinations of the three types of BPR project were deployed (other

than post-hoc) or in what circumstances, or to take any view on whether or

not any specific approach to BPR was appropriate. In this sense this research

has investigated the natural evolutionary paths taken by organisations when

using the BPR as a theme for performance improvement, rather than

adopting a contingency perspective.

From this perspective, this research can be interpreted as one of numerous

thematic approaches to performance improvement which have been

undertaken by organisations over the last 25 – 30 years. Other well

documented themes have included, advanced technology, integrated

systems, TQM, teamworking etc. The dynamics of BPR maturity outlined in

Figure 4 indicate what might be described as the results of a ‘natural’

evolution rather than a ‘rational’ (Scott 1981) system of interventions. The

factor analysis emphasizes the importance of taking a strategy focus in

moving between stages 3 and 4, and the complete movement out of a cost

focus in moving from stage 4 to 5. In reporting from this empirical research

base the ‘naturalistic orientation’ taken by practitioners, this does not, and

should not be taken as normative prescription. Our view is that organisations

appeared to follow the particular path outlined implicitly, learning as they

went, focusing initially on taking a cost reduction / process orientation and

only later ‘discovering’ the importance of the more strategic implications of

their undertaking. Having ‘discovered’ this, then they often dropped their

initial emphasis on cost reduction as they uncovered a more complete

understanding of the strategic significance of the changes envisaged.

27

To those who have been engaged for many years in understanding and

researching strategic change in organisations, the parallels with early

performance improvement activities, particularly in manufacturing, are

immediate. For example, Waterlow and Monniot (1986) in their study of the

state of the art in computer aided production management found that whilst

modular applications aimed at cost reduction were largely successful and had

led to widespread adoption, full exploitation was proving problematic and a

more strategic approach was required in order to facilitate this end. Also,

Barrar et al (1989) in their study of MRP2, concluded that success in

implementation was dependent upon the recognition of more strategic

changes in ideology, organisation and management process. Buckingham

and Bessant (1989) concur ‘ … only by moving beyond seeing technology as

a substitution device can organisations develop the flexibility necessary to

fully benefit from integrated technologies’. Bessant and Francis (1999) in their

investigation of policy deployment look at levels of continuous improvement in

practice. They too have 5 levels, of which levels 4 and 5 are described in

terms of strategic benefits and strategic innovation.

In addition to this academic work, consultants have also indicated the ‘patchy

success’ of performance improvement initiatives. For example, as long ago

as 1986 Ingersoll Engineers surveyed companies introducing CIM, reporting

that only approximately a half were seen as successful in terms of profitability

and overall impact on performance. Likewise, A T Kearney (1989) reported in

the conclusions of their survey of computer integrated manufacturing ‘ … to

be effective as a means of achieving competitive advantage, it (CIM) must be

introduced as part of a new strategic thrust in the organisation’.

In all of these examples of the management of the introduction of

performance improvement using a variety of technologies, techniques and

interventions, an initial focus on efficiency gain had been replaced with a

growing realization of the importance of a strategic approach. Our research

reinforces this general picture in terms of BPR implementation, whereby

management teams seemingly initiate performance improvement driven by

28

the need to increase local efficiencies, and only later discover the strategic

significance of their actions. This general view might be interpreted as both

disappointing on the one hand, yet providing an opportunity on the other.

It is disappointing in so far as learning which was painstakingly achieved in

the 1980s and 90s concerning the importance of taking a strategic

perspective at the outset of performance improvement programmes seems to

have not been transferred immediately to the particular case of BPR.

However, on the other hand, there is no reason why this could not be the

case. Our enquiry into unveiling the ‘naturalistic’ progression of BPR

interventions towards maturity, leads us to the view that there is no reason

why, once the natural dynamics are understood, managers cannot intervene

earlier and more purposefully to progress BPR in a more strategic sense

rather more quickly. In the same way that organisations in the 1980’s and

90’s were able to learn from experience concerning the downside of

‘naturalistic’ progression, including extended implementation timescales and

lack of exploitation pay off, so managers can choose to intervene to increase

both the timeliness and strategic effectiveness of BPR implementation.

Intervening as purposeful agents in their configurational roles of

organisational architects and systems engineers in order to obtain speedy

and full benefit from BPR programmes requires, in our view, a distinct

emphasis on taking a strategic approach to BPR implementation from the

outset. Changing mindset (Gear, Liendo and Scott, 1989) from a cost

reduction / processed focused view to a more strategic perspective, facilitates

the ‘rational’ design of BPR programmes. This can be contrasted with the

more ‘naturalistic’ orientation revealed by our research which we believe to be

the more usual and implicit pattern of implementation.

CONCLUSIONS

This paper set out to address two research questions. What are the relationships (if

any) between the discussions of a BPR programme? What are the relationships (if

any) between these dimensions and the maturity of a BPR implementation?

29

With regard to the first question we conducted a factor analysis on the data and the

results indicated that there is indeed a relationship between those ten issues that we

had identified in the literature. The factor analysis suggests that the data combines

together to form three forms of BPR. The first form we have called strategic BPR

(SBPR). SBPR combines a BPR project focused on improving service delivery, an

organisation wide approach to developing the strategic objectives of the project with

changes to the organisational culture. The performance measures are strategically

aligned, and the business process architecture is widely deployed.

The second type we have called Process focused BPR (PBPR). PBPR has as its

main focus the business process. It includes the management of the organisational

infrastructure surrounding the business processes, and the development of a widely

deployed systemic process architecture.

The third type we have termed Cost reduction BPR (CBPR). CBPR has a focus on

cost reduction, in organisations where IT is a considerable constraint and they are

responding to an urgent market requirement. In short it has all the components of

the downsizing BPR approach of which Grint and Case (1998) and De Cock (1997)

were so heavily critical.

The second research question addressed the dynamics of BPR implementation,

focusing on the maturity of BPR programme, where maturity was the dependent

variable. This produced some interesting results. As organisations moved through

maturity phases 1 to 3, a focus on SBPR and PBPR appeared dominant. The

movement from maturity phases 3 to 4 was characterised by a considerable

increase in strategic focus and some increase in process focus. Subsequently, the

movement from maturity phase 4 to 5 was not characterised by SBPR or PBPR but

by a significant reduction in CBPR. The relationship between those organisations

grouped under maturity phases 4 and 5 was almost orthogonal to the 1,2,3,4

progression. Moving from phase 4-5 is typically characterised by organisations

drastically reducing the emphasis on cost reduction that is so clear in the first 4

phases.

30

Factor analysis shows relationships not causality. To gain insight into causal

developmental issues, in the second phase of the project we re-visited some of the

organisations we had visited earlier, to see whether or not those organisations that

had latent potential in SPBR and PBPR had moved along the maturity axis. For this

follow up phase we chose organisations that had either a low or intermediate level of

BPR maturity. Those organisations in group one of BPR maturity had not

progressed. The results indicated that to progress from group one it is not sufficient

to have either latent potential on SBPR or PBPR it is necessary to have latent

potential on both. For those organisations at the intermediate levels that had no

latent potential, as predicted, had not progressed. The company that had latent

potential in PBPR had progressed. The conclusions from such a small sample can

be only tentative, however they do tend to agree with findings from research into

other thematic change programmes. It is also interesting to note that of our original

sample of 33 organisations, a third had either merged or had been involved in a

takeover. It is conceivable that those organisations carrying out BPR projects were

doing so because of some difficulty, or that carrying out a BPR project then made

them an excellent target for merger or takeover. From this restricted sample we can

draw no firm conclusions on the potential of BPR organisations for takeover,

however this does seem worthy of extended future research.

These results resonate with conclusions from research into other performance

improvement themes such as continuous improvement, TQM, teamworking, MRPII,

CIM etc., confirming findings that advanced implementation and full exploitation

require the adoption of a ‘strategic’ approach. It follows from this that guidance for

practicing managers implementing BPR programmes is that if they wish to progress

toward full implementation maturity, and avoid the criticism of participating in yet

another fad or fashion, they should put considerable effort early in the

implementation into developing a strategically aligned project. Integrating such an

orientation with a concentration on the issues of process architecture offers the

potential for speedy progression along the maturity axis. Although for many cost

reduction may well be the basis on which many projects are originally founded,

gaining full benefit and progressing toward maturity requires a fundamental shift both

31

in managerial mindset and in the consequential prescribed format of the BPR

programme.

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35

Figure 1 – An example of a categorisation for process architecture

Red Proc.

Arch.

Systemic

Proc. Arch.

Widely Deployed

No Process

Architecture

L

YJ B

V

P

G S

K M

A5

Q A7N

A

C

A2

A1B1

B3

A4E B2

W

T

H

A9

F

Z

A3R

A8

Definitions

The X Axis

Systemic Proc. Arch. (Systemic Process Architecture) ranges broadly across the business. It is holistic in scope.

Red Proc. Arch. (Reductionist Process Architecture) is confined to a specific business area. It is limited in scope.

The Y Axis

Widely deployed reflects a broad dissemination across the organisation.

No Process architecture reflects very restricted deployment or no process architecture in place.

The letters refer to individual organisations from our sample. Each company could be in one of five positions on the X Axis and also in one of five positions on the Y Axis.

36

Appendix 1

Principal Components Analysis correlation matrices Correlation Matrix

Strategy: local - all

strategy: single point -

dual point

performance measures: localised - strategic

performance measures: cost focus

performance measures:

service focus

process architecture: reductionist - systematic

process architecture: deployment

human factors: culture

human factors: organisational

design

information technology

Strategy: local - all

1.000 .634 .617 -.342 .671 .367 .488 .654 .428 .070

strategy: single point -

dual point

.634 1.000 .530 -.400 .499 .573 .521 .524 .550 .153

performance measures: localised - strategic

.617 .530 1.000 .011 .347 .573 .725 .688 .574 .004

performance measures: cost focus

-.342 -.400 .011 1.000 -.483 -.220 .050 -.124 .069 -.328

performance

measures: service focus

.671 .499 .347 -.483 1.000 .373 .433 .690 .179 .277

process architecture: reductionist - systematic

.367 .573 .573 -.220 .373 1.000 .531 .260 .635 .109

process architecture: deployment

.488 .521 .725 .050 .433 .531 1.000 .707 .579 .022

human factors: culture

.654 .524 .688 -.124 .690 .260 .707 1.000 .333 .064

human factors: organisational

design

.428 .550 .574 .069 .179 .635 .579 .333 1.000 .104

information technology

.070 .153 .004 -.328 .277 .109 .022 .064 .104 1.000

37

Appendix 2 Correlation Matrix Significance. (1-tailed)

Strategy: local - all

strategy: single point -

dual point

performance measures: localised - strategic

performance measures: cost focus

performance measures:

service focus

process architecture: reductionist - systematic

process architecture: deployment

human factors: culture

human factors: organisational

design

information technology

Strategy: local - all

.000 .000 .026 .000 .018 .002 .000 .006 .350

strategy: single point -

dual point

.000 .001 .011 .002 .000 .001 .001 .000 .198

performance measures: localised - strategic

.000 .001 .477 .024 .000 .000 .000 .000 .491

performance measures: cost focus

.026 .011 .477 .002 .110 .392 .245 .352 .031

performance measures:

service focus

.000 .002 .024 .002 .016 .006 .000 .160 .059

process architecture:

reductionist - systematic

.018 .000 .000 .110 .016 .001 .072 .000 .273

process architecture: deployment

.002 .001 .000 .392 .006 .001 .000 .000 .452

human factors: culture

.000 .001 .000 .245 .000 .072 .000 .029 .363

human factors: organisational

design

.006 .000 .000 .352 .160 .000 .000 .029 .282

information technology

.350 .198 .491 .031 .059 .273 .452 .363 .282

38

Appendix 3

Rotated Component Loading Matrix

Component 1 2 3 Variable SBPR PBPR CBPR

human factors: culture

.909

Strategy: local - all

.786

performance measures:

service focus

.780 -.455

human factors:

organisational design

.891

process architecture: reductionist - systematic

.827

performance measures: localised - strategic

.595 .635

process architecture: deployment

.599 .610

strategy: single point -

dual point

.493 .571 -.356

performance measures: cost focus

.837

information technology

-.704

39

Appendix 4

Scatter plots of organisations according to BPR maturity on Factors 1, 2, and 3

Facto

r 1 (

SB

PR

) F

acto

r 2 (

PB

PR

)

Factor 1 (SBPR)

Facto

r 3 (

CB

PR

)

Factor 2 (PBPR) Factor 3 (CBPR)

Maturity

Group means

5.00

4.00

3.00

2.00

1.00

1 1

1

1

1

1

2

2

2

3

3

3

3

3

3

4

4 4

4

4 5

4

5

5

5

5

5

2

2

2

40

Appendix 5 Chart showing initial positions of organisations revisited relative

to group means on factors 1, 2 and 3

Facto

r 1 (

SB

PR

)

5 4

3 2

1

G A E

F

B

C D

5 4

3 2

1

G A E

F

B

C D

5

4

3 2

1

G

A

E

F B

C D

Facto

r 2 (

PB

PR

)

5 4

3 2

1

G

A

E

F B

C D

5

4 3

2 1

G A

E

F

B

C D

Factor 1 (SBPR)

Facto

r 3 (

CB

PR

)

5

4 3 2 1

G A

E

F

B

C D

Factor 2 (PBPR) Factor 3 (CBPR)

Maturity

Group means

3.00

2.00

1.00