Making Sense of Business Process Change Impacts: The Ethiopian Experience
Keywords:
Business Process Change, Success Factors, BPC OutcomesAbstract
One of the tools used by some governments in Africa to bring about organizational transformation is business process change (BPC). BPC is meant to bring dramatic changes in the way organizations conduct their business. Though the BPC concept seems to be conceptually appealing, it has been reported by many scholars that BPC comes short of its expectations.
This study aimed to identify and assess the importance of factors the successful implementation of BPC projects in organizations with the in the developing country context. The factors which are identified are the degree to which strategic business process changes are included in the BPC project, level and complexity of problems are encountered; the degree to which proposed BPC objectives are being identified and incorporated in these change project plans and are actually derived; and the impact of BPC endeavors on business processes and on the organization. These distinct hypotheses about the BPC implementation process were tested. Bottommost recommendations are made for practitioners so that they can focus their attention on success factors so that they may limit the risk of failure. Generally, it has been observed that organizations give little attention to strategic processes critical to the very existence of the organization, employees’ empowerment recommended in the BPC literature. The most frequent problems while implementing BPC seem to be very difficult to address such as communication barriers, the unforeseen magnitude of the BPC effort, and its interruption to operations.
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