Organizational Development: A Manual for Managers and ... - FPDL

• Make sure that all involved, both inside the organization and out, understand how the
new business process is supposed to work and how they should interface with it as
provider or recipient of the service. In other words, provide proper training in a timely
fashion. On-the-job training is not conducive to the introduction of a new business
process.
• Set a clear timetable with measurable milestones to assess progress. …Because in
many countries top managers who are not career civil servants do not stay long …it is
essential that the whole process be conceived, tried and implemented within a relatively
short period of time.
• Public agencies cannot re-engineer a given process through trial and error. Thus, the
engineering effort should use computer simulations and, when possible, pilot projects to
test and verify the viability and benefits of the re-engineered business process.
(Halachimi, 1995)
As in most cases with modern terms, re-engineering is just ‘another word for good governance’. If
there is no problem with the organization – then there is nothing to re-engineer. It is just a more
drastic measure that should be applied when less painful treatments are not sufficient for ensuring
the real quality of operations. BPR is about embracing the hidden potential for change by
recognizing that incremental change only improves what is already done, while BPR may
fundamentally change what is done. If a procedure or part of a process is redundant, in the sense
that it adds no value to a product or service, improvement in its efficiency is a false gain. While
efficiency improvement reduces the amount of waste, the procedure still remains as a cost in the
system. The adoption of BPR techniques in process analysis can help to overcome this problem,
eradicating procedures rather than improving them. (Beckford, 2002)
Re-engineering in organizations of everything that needs to be re-engineered is the first step in
structural improvement that gives way to TQM, teamwork, and empowerment. The re-engineered
organization is envisioned to be closely aligned to the customer and to rely on empowered
employees handling the entire process of delivering products and services of quality to the
customer; (compare with TQM). This again, according to BPR, would indicate a lessening of
control as empowered employees are guided by internalized shared values. (S.P.Gunge, in
Knights and Willmott, 2000)
Organizational learning
Organizations as organisms possess the attribute of behaviour, and as less primitive organisms -
they have a kind of memory. The content of the memory determines behavioural reactions, and
consequently the chances for success (which is survival, in general) or failure.
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