Working around technologies—invisible professionalism?

This study discusses how professionalism and work ethics influence how health care professionals work around new technologies. When people avoid using technologies, they are not necessarily ceasing to engage in their work activities. The workaround strategies presented here are rather practical expressions of professionals’ active encounter with the complexity of work situations, and can therefore be important signs of professional ethical judgement. Drawing on science and technology studies and the concept of invisible work, the study discusses workaround situations that arise in health care work in Denmark. The aim and contribution of the study is twofold. First, it attempts to revitalise the discussion on technology workaround strategies as responsible professionalism. Second, it will direct attention to and contribute to an understanding of how the normativity embedded in technological development in the health care sector is central to the work of health care professionals.     

Changing the record: the inter‐professional,subjective and embodied effects of electronic patient records

Electronic patient record systems promise to optimise the delivery of health care. However, changing the record can disrupt established health‐care work and organisation, producing less than optimum outcomes. Changing the record may not only change what health‐care professionals do but may also change their understandings of work and self.     

Reengineering of materials management system: A case study

A business process reengineering (BPR) project relating to the materials management function of a cement manufacturing plant is presented in this paper. The BPR project evolved out of an organisation development (OD) intervention initiative. Such an intervention aimed at improving value innovation capability of materials management professionals of a large cement manufacturing plant in India. The proposition here is that the value metrics relate to inside-in value innovations in order to deliver inside-out value to the customers in the face of fierce competition in Indian Cement industry. Materials of all types used in a cement plant constitute 60–70% of the total cost and hence the effective operations of procurement and inventory are the critical success factors for strategic value innovations and thereby competitiveness. The primary emphasis in this project was on learning and implementation, by creating an urgency for instilling responsible leadership and building organic partnership through knowledge networking.     

Business process re-engineering in theory and practice: business paradise regained?

This article examines the hype surrounding BPR from a historical, theoretical and empirical perspective. It delineates three ways in which politics are critical to understanding BPR and uses findings on BPR practice, including from case study work and a 1994/5 UK survey conducted by the authors, to locate and explain BPR's appeal and also the less radical outcomes of BPR practice.     

Business Process Re-engineering in the Public Sector: a Case Study of the Contributions Agency

There has been a growing literature which, from a social science perspective, seeks to critically assess the use of business process re-engineering (BPR) in effecting radical organisational change. Using a case study of the Contributions Agency, this article reports on the problems of using BPR in a public sector organisation, and discusses the findings in relation to the current critique of BPR.     

A conceptual and analytical framework for business process reengineering

BPR has become a hot buzzword in management and information systems disciplines. However, there is a lacuna in recognizing the characteristics and the way of performing BPR. In this paper, we categorize the reasons for BPR failure as the lack of understanding of and the inability to perform BPR, and we reviewed BPR based on the four key concepts: fundamental, radical, dramatic, and process. We argue that SSM can be applied in performing BPR in the following ways:

1. (1) SSM can be a general methodology for BPR,

2. (2) SSM can be an analytical framework for BPR, and

3. (3) SSM is able to deal with the ill-defined and complex business situation in a BPR effort.

To illustrate the applicability of SSM in the context of BPR, we describe a live case of a BPR effort in developing and implementing an image processing system for hospital ward ordering. Finally, in order to demonstrate the power of SSM, by extending SSM considerations of What/How, we elaborate further on the What's and How's conceptual framework of an analysis and redesign effort. Based on this framework, we review the roles of information technologies in BPR.     

Empirically testing ES success factors in business process reengineering

Previously proposed success factors for Expert Systems implementation are field tested in the context of business process reengineering (BPR) projects. Due to its nature mimicking human expert behavior, ES technology applications in BPR provide a unique opportunity to study major organization changes within a relatively short time. Using Pearson correlations and multivariate regression analysis, eight ES implementation success factors proposed in the literature were empirically tested in this study in terms of their importance to the BPR benefits derived from the application. Sixty-two ES applications within E.I. Dupont de Nemours and Company dealing with business process changes significant enough to be called BPR were used. Despite the relatively small sample size, six of the eight success factors were corroborated: user satisfaction with the ES, the importance and difficulty of the business problem addressed, user attitudes toward ES technology and the particular ES project, the degree of user involvement in the ES implementation process, and the ES developer(s) skills.     

Business process reengineering of an air cargo handling process

Business Process Reengineering (BPR) is one of the most recent innovations in industrial engineering and management science which represents the rapid and radical redesign of strategic, value-added processes and the system, policies and organizational structures that support them to optimize the work flows and productivity of an organization. This paper presents a BPR effort and programme of an air cargo handling process at an international airport. The objective of this work is to demonstrate the performance breakthrough of a BPR technique to achieve dramatic improvements in critical measures of contemporary performance with respect to quality service and speed in the airlines cargo handling process. Field data on service dimensions of the process have been collected choosing time as metric. Process-flow diagrams, process analysis worksheets and data summary charts are prepared as effective tools to get a thorough understanding of the existing process with a view to focus on the possible areas of improvements. A fact-based defensible and quantifiable “Before–after chart” of BPR has been presented for documenting the expected gains. BPR has proved to be a modern innovative useful industrial engineering and management technique to achieve dramatic improvement in operational efficiencies for quality services of the airlines cargo handling processes.     

企业成功实施管理流程再造实务研究

文章讨论了管理流程再造的含义、发展状况，并通过福特公司一个流程再造、压缩管理人员的实例分析来说明流程再造并非大型企业的专利，中小企业也同样可以成功实施流程再造。     

BPR as 'IT-enabled organizational change': an assessment

This article examines the emergence of BPR from the literature on the strategic use of IT. Two case studies of BPR are then presented. Analysis of this material suggests that there is a tension between strategic re-orientation and cost-saving in many BPR projects which is difficult to resolve. This tension is explored further using a historical analysis of 'frameworks' of computing.     

Don't obliterate, informate!: BPR for the information age

This article takes the view that BPR in the dominant form in which it is presently characterised, is a re-expression of industrial age classical administration. As such it is oblivious of organization as a political entity or as a set of 'human resources' . What is needed is a new model of BPR for the information age.     

A pernicious panacea—a critical evaluation of business re-engineering

This article investigates the practicalities of implementing business process re-engineering (BPR) through two case studies, DefCo and ServiCo in the public sector. It demonstrates the destructive and insidious nature of BPR, and deconstructs the myth that BPR represents a discontinuity in management thinking.     

The challenge of BPR to the information systems profession

This article explores the relevance of ideas emerging from business process re-engineering (BPR) for the information systems profession. The marginal role of this profession in conceiving and leading organizational change is examined. Against this background, current interest in BPR is seen as reasserting the challenge of incorporating an active engagement with organizational design into professional practices.     

业务流程再造与信息技术

概述了业务流程再造(BPR)的涵义,并指出了它与信息技术的密切关系;阐述了BPR对信息系统带来的影响和意义;详述了信息技术对流程再造的促进,以及在再造实施中信息技术所起的作用;应用1个实例阐述了信息技术对实施业务流程再造的重要意义。     

The consultants' offensive: reengineering – from fad to technique

Business process reengineering has tended to be seen as a management fashion and the brainchild of the gurus who popularised it. Yet this overlooks the role of consultants in the spread of BPR and the system itself as a specific technique of change management. In fact BPR played a significant role in the push for new business in management consultancy and has become integral to an armoury of consultant tools. This article explores reengineering as a consultancy solution in the context of the external expert's distinctive claims on knowledge, and argues that this approach reveals new insights into both reengineering and the consultancy process.     

What is value–adding? Contradictions in the practice of BPR in a Danish Social Service Administration

This article explores the implementation of BPR in the Social Service Administration in a Danish municipality. The technical rationality inherited in BPR marginalises broader conceptions of work–rationality represented by the social workers. This results in a 'clash' between rationalities in the Family Group, causing increased strain and lower job satisfaction.     

BPR implementation in Europe: the adaptation of a management concept

This paper analyses Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) implementation in 20 European firms. In contrast with the radical postulates of the early orthodox literature, the find- ings reveal that BPR was used in a preventive way, with implementation time lengths directly related to the scope of the organisational changes attempted and generating moderately positive results according to corporate performance indicators, with relatively low social cost.     

Epochs and institutions: contextualizing business process re-engineering

Capitalism is currently undergoing an epochal change. The associated corporate change is sticky for reasons of institutional inertia. Business process re-engineering is a corporate response which should be understood in technical, social and political terms. Core elements of BPR are identified, illustrated, and critiqued, partly through a BPR case researched by the authors.     

Time-driven activity-based costing for health care provider supply chains

ABSTRACT

Health care providers currently operate in an environment of complex supply chains and increasing costs where approximately one third of hospital operating expenses are related to supplies. It is pertinent that health care providers have a clear understanding of their supply chain process costs. Knowing how these costs are driven and where opportunities for cost reduction exist can support health care provider supply chain (HPSC) efficiency. In this article, we present a time-driven activity-based costing (TDABC) supply chain cost methodology for health care providers. A TDABC management system can provide health care providers with valuable product and process supply chain cost information by investigating logistics activities, resource consumption, and time drivers. Our HPSC TDABC methodology is demonstrated in a case study conducted for the supply chain department of a 200-bed, not-for-profit hospital.     

BPR—overcoming impediments to change in the public sector

Here the author examines the extent of BPR practice across UK government, reaching conclusions about overcoming impediments which arise in organizational change processes.