Addis Ababa University School of Business and Administration Department of Accounting and Finance

Module: Business Research Methods (MBA 613) Challenges to Implement Business Process Reengineering (BPR) at Samara University
Prepared by: Naod Mekonnen (GSR/2338/02)

Submitted to: Wollela A Y (Ph.D)

June 2010

Contents Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................. 2 1.1 Overview ........................................................................................................ 2 1.2. Statement of the problems ................................................................................. 4 1.3. Purpose of the study ........................................................................................... 5 Chapter 2: Literature review ......................................................................................... 6 2.1. Business Process Reengineering (BPR): theory ................................................ 6 2.1.1 BPR in higher education institution ........................................................ 8 2.1.2 BPR implementation barriers.................................................................. 9 2.2 Empirical studies on BPR ............................................................................ 11 2.3 Conclusion and knowledge gap ................................................................... 13 Chapter 3: Research design......................................................................................... 14 3.1 Research questions ....................................................................................... 14 3.2 Research design ............................................................................................ 14 3.2.1 Research method adopted ..................................................................... 17 Chapter 4: Significant, delimitation, final structure, work plan, and budgeted cost of the study ...................................................................................................................... 21 4.1 Significant of the study ................................................................................ 21 4.2 Delimitation of the study.............................................................................. 21 4.3 Final structure of the study........................................................................... 21 4.4 Work plan ..................................................................................................... 21 4.5 Budgeted cost ............................................................................................... 21 Reference .................................................................................................................... 22 Appendix: 1- Summary of key success/failure factors in BPR .................................. 25 Appendix: 2- Survey instrument ................................................................................. 26 Appendix: 3 - Work plan of the study ........................................................................ 31 Appendix: 4 - Budgeted cost of the study................................................................... 32

Chapter 1: Introduction This proposal is prepared to study the challenges faced by Samara University to implement Business Process Reengineering (BPR). Among various management tools, BPR is one of the management tool that can help the organization for effective, efficient and economic performance of business processes though dramatic and radical redesign of processes. It can also help to contributes benefit to the external stakeholders of the organization. The aim of this introductory chapter is to provide background information on the proposed study. The remaining sections of this chapter organized as follows: The first section presents overview of Samara University inline with BPR so as to provide background for the proposed study. The second section presents the statement of problems. Next, purpose of the study presented in the third section. 1.1 Overview Samara University is one of recently inaugurated universities in Ethiopia, which is located North-Eastern part of Ethiopia- region two, Afar. At the beginning of 2008, the University begins the conventional teaching-learning businesses by accepting more than 1,000 students assigned by the Ethiopian Ministry of Education (MoE). In doing so, the University adopted the ways of doing businesses from elder universities of Ethiopia like Addis Ababa University, Mekelle University and so on. However, the adopted processes criticized being as old fashioned processes that are scattered in pieces of tasks among unites of the University. That in turn dissatisfied both the customers and service providers. In addition, those old fashioned work practices lack to enhance the Ethiopian universities for effective, efficient and economic performance. As a result, the Ethiopian Ministry of Capacity Building (MCB) tries to introduce transformation in Ethiopia in the ways in which works have to be done by all government organization through BPR. Thus, under the delegation of MoE, Ethiopian

universities, including Samara University, engaged in BPR project starting from the last two years (2008 and 2009). To carry out BPR project at Samara University, the Universitys management had identified five processes and assigned redesign team members in October 2008. Eventually, the University finished the redesign phase of BPR in May 2009 and assigned an implementation team to commence the implementation of newly designed processes in June 2009. However, the University not yet implemented the newly redesigned processes. With this regard, Linden (1998) noted that the biggest disappointment of organizations on BPR is with the implementation or more specifically, lack of implementation. Likewise, Hammer and Champy (1993) estimated that about between 50 to 70 percent of BPR initiative fails to achieve their objectives. Studies on the key success and failure factors of BPR implementation attempted to approach to identify different sets of factors (Ahmad et al., 2007; Al-Mashari and Zairi, 1999; Attaran and Wood, 1999; Allen and Fifield, 1999). These factors include change management, management competency and support, organizational culture, project planning and management, IT infrastructure and financial resources. Beside this, Attaran (2000) attempted to identify barriers to successful implementation of BPR; however, the author claimed that the difference between success and failure did not depend on company size or resources, but on appropriate planning and avoidance of pitfalls. The above mentioned studies examined the factors that affect successful implementation of BPR. The factors identified by various authors are almost similar, except Allen and Fifield (1999) and Terziovskia et al. (2002) depart on the IT factor. In Ethiopia, although the introduction of BPR is recent phenomenon, specific factors that affect BPR implementation and their magnitudes, remained open questions. Particularly, Samara University faced challenges to implement the redesigned processes. Thus, it is appropriate to study the challenges faced at the early stage that will help to take corrective action before the project completely failed. As a result, the 3

study will attempt to contribute to the literature by studying through a mixed method of research design to identify the factors that affect BPR implementation and to better understand the magnitudes of various factors that affect BPR implementation. 1.2. Statement of the problems The traditional working practices of Ethiopian public organizations criticized as being fragmented across various units of the organization. And each unit focused only on one task that leads to frustrate the customers from ups and downs to get services from various units handoffs. As such, the traditional working practices are not efficient, effective and economical in this changing and competitive environment. To alleviate like the above mentioned working practices, recently, the Ethiopian MCB tries to introduce transformation in Ethiopia in which works have to be done by all governmental organization through BPR. Accordingly, under the delegation of MoE, Ethiopian universities, including Samara University, engaged with BPR project to drastically change the traditional work practices with a new one. Having this, in May 2009 Samara University finished the first phase of BPR project by redesigning new processes and arranged implementation team to commence the implementation process. However, the University not yet implemented any of redesigned processes. Although in BPR principles all of the redesigned processes shall not be implemented once rather step-by-step of pilot study, at least some selected redesigned processes have to be piloted and implemented. Otherwise, the rate of failure increased as time passed. Thus, this lack of implementation implied that the Universitys BPR project faced challenges to implement and its intended objective remained on shelf. In this regard, Allen and Fifield (1999) and United States General Accounting Office (1997) noted that implementing BPR project is far from straight forward activities. In addition to the challenges, Attaran and Wood (1999) added that BPR is still an unfulfilled promise for many organizations despite all the energy, money and efforts spent by organization trying to make their organizations reengineering efforts successful. In

general, as more organizations undertake BPR, issues in implementing become major concerns. Samara University BPR implementation challenges could be traced to various factors that were identified by different authors (Ahmad et al., 2007; Al-Mashari and Zairi, 1999; Allen and Fifield, 1999; Attaran and Wood, 1999), such as change management, management competency and support, organizational culture, project planning and management, IT and Financial resources. However, the specific factors that the University faced to implement BPR and the magnitude of their effect not addressed on prior literature. Therefore, it is worth researching to identify the factors that affect BPR implementation and their magnitude on the implementation process. 1.3. Purpose of the study The purpose of this two-phase, sequential mixed method study will be to examine BPR implementation. In the first phase, quantitative survey research questions will identify factors that lead to faced challenges to implement BPR with BPR implementation and redesign team members of Samara University. Information from this quantitative phase will be used further in second qualitative phase. In the second phase, qualitative interviews will be used to understand the magnitude of identified factors as challenges to implement BPR with the University president and two vice presidents at Samara University. The reason for following up with qualitative research in the second phase is to better understand the magnitude of the identified factors. In general, the purpose of this study will be: to identify the factors that lead to face challenges to implement BPR at Samara University and to better understand the magnitude of the identified factors. The following chapter presents review of literature regarding to BPR along with its theory and empirical studies on it, and finally it presents conclusions and gap on BPR literature specific to the Ethiopian case.

Chapter 2: Literature review Today, globalization along with key driving forces such as customers behavior, competition among businesses and change in the working environment have created tough environment for organization that has been working with outdated philosophies and principles of work practices. Although those outdated philosophies and principles succeed to cope up the socio-economic challenges of that time, they cannot fit todays new environment. The new environment requires organizations to realize new working practices that can make up them to be responsive and flexible for the changing environment. In doing so, organizations adopt various types of management tools such as Total Quality Management (TQM), Restructuring, Business Process Reengineering (BPR), and so on. In light of the above induction, the aim of this chapter is to review literature on BPR and factors that can impede successful BPR implementation. Accordingly, the review of literature will help to establishes conceptual framework for the proposed study and highlight previous studies on BPR implementation with their underling concepts so as to helps to identify gaps in the literature and forward research questions for the proposed study. The review part has three sections. The first section presents reviews regarding to theory of BPR, then, the following section presents prior empirical studies on BPR implementation. Finally, section three presents conclusions and gaps in literature. 2.1. Business Process Reengineering (BPR): theory As indicated previously BPR is one of the management tools undertaken by organizations to respond to the changing environment. BPR is about beginning a new from scratch; starting over entirely by considering how jobs in the organization put together. Thus, it entails the fundamental and radical redesign of the business process to replace the old/traditional processes with a new one for the pursuit of new direction and perspective of the organization. BPR has been popular business reorganization for the past to decade. The term Business Process Reengineering was first introduced by Hammer (1990) and 6

Davenport and Short (1990). Tanoglu (2004) claimed that during the beginning of 1990s, with globalization and extraordinary pace of development in the IT area, three driving forces (customers, competition and change) resulted BPR. Following the introduction of concepts on BPR by Hammer (1990) and Davenport and Short (1990), many authors called BPR as process innovation, business process redesign, business reengineering, or process reengineering (Revenaugh, 1994). Because of these nomenclature variations, Tanoglu (2004) claimed Hammer and Champy (1993) BPR definition is widely accepted. Hammer and Champy (1993) defined BPR as: is the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical, contemporary measures of performance, such as cost, quality, service, and speed. According to the authors, this definition comprises four keywords: fundamental, radical, dramatic and process. These four keywords of BPR implied that before redesigning the process understanding the fundamental business operation is necessary, while it ignores the underlying rules and assumptions to radically redesign the process for dramatic performance of business process that can be measured the in terms of speed, cost and quality. Having this insight, BPR has its own methodology and principles along with step-bystep procedures that encompasses starting from developing organizational mission to the final implementation of BPR project. Thus, in order to carry out BPR project, a series steps have to be taken. With respect to the steps, various authors (Linden, 1998; Hammer and Champy, 1993) pioneered various set of steps. Although all of steps to carry out BPR not reviewed here due to scope limitation of the proposed study, some Attarans and Woods (1999) general guide lines outlined hereunder, and later Lindens (1998) implementation steps presented. Reengineering effort should be by a clearly defined strategic mission. Reengineering should focus on important cross organizational business processes critical to the mission of the organization. 7

Cost reduction is not the only goal of reengineering. Seeking opportunities for new sources of revenue growth could be an important driving for the reengineering efforts.

Leadership plays an important role in the success of reengineering.

After the first phase of BPR completed with redesigned process, the next phase is implementation of the redesigned process. According to Hummer and Champy

(1993), the implementation phase involves two points. One is the redesigned process tested and implemented, and the other point is the alignment of organizations structure, management and measurement system, values and beliefs, and IT to the new process. So, the new process will furnish the required result of value. Organizations should adopt a suitable BPR methodology to serve as a management framework for the implementation (Attaran, 2000; Linden, 1998). The following are outlined by Linden (1998) as steps to be followed during the implementation phase. (i) Develop a charter; (ii) Establish communication strategies; (iii) Hold an all hand meeting to review the model; (iv) Prepare a detailed implementation plan; (v) Run pilot tests, revise the redesigned processes if needed; (vi) Implement short-term changes; (vii) Phase in long-term changes; and (vii) Measure the performance of the new process. These steps stressed that an implementation plan should be developed to spells out the work that needs to be done, with time frames, decision points, and resource allocations. Also, training and workforce issues are important for effective implementation plan. Pilot testing provides a method for refining the process and building support for the full implementation. Further, the steps stressed the importance of ongoing performance measurement and feedback to continually improve the new processes once it is in place. 2.1.1 BPR in higher education institution The motivation to undertake BPR project is usually the realization of breakthrough performance improvement. Lingus (1993) (cited in Terziovskia et al., 2002) claimed that a 30-35% reduction in the cost of sales; 75-80% reduction in delivery time; 608

80% reduction in inventory; 65-70% reduction in the cost of quality; and unpredictable but substantial increased market share, were all possible through effective BPR. In general, as indicated previously the three driving forces (change, competition and customer) redirect organizations to look new working practices. As a result, many organizations in various industries (banking, automobile, services, and so on) used BPR as a panacea for organizational illness and to respond to high level of competition, changing environment and customer need (Mnisha, 2004; Attaran and Wood, 1999). In these regards, since educational institutions function similar to any other business organizations, tools used by business organizations can be implemented by them too (Balaji, 2004). Thus, BPR can be used to reorganize educational institutions. Likewise, educational institutions in pursuit of improved performance used BPR in various countries. For example, in Malaysia, New Zealand, Spain, United Kingdom (UK), and United State of America (USA) educational institution implemented BPR to enhance efficiency, effectiveness and economic performance (Sohail et al., 2006; Balaji, 2004; Adenso-Diaz and Canteli, 2004; Allen and Fifield, 1999; Casey, 1995). Casey (1995) stressed that BPR offers a thoroughly researched and well-crafted prescriptions punch list for evaluating how well a college or university runs its business. Therefore, these experiences highlighted that higher education institutions can adopt BPR for the enhancements of their performances like other types of business organizations. 2.1.2 BPR implementation barriers BPR will have significant positive results if implemented correctly. Several authors (Attaran and Wood, 1999; Terziovskia et al., 2003; Revenaugh, 1994) indicated numerous organizations (Ford Motor, Wal-Mart, IBM Credit Co., etc) achieved larger cost reduction, higher profits, improved quality and productivity, faster response to market and customer service through BPR. However, despite the significant growth of BPR literature and increasingly useed by many organizations, not all organizations achieved their intended result through BPR. As Hammer and Champy (1993) estimated, about 70 percent of BPR projects fail to achieve dramatic results that the organizations intended to achieve. Beside this, linden (1998) noted the biggest source 9

of organizational disappointment with BPR change effort is implementation, or more specifically, lack of implementation. Thus, as more organizations undertaken BPR project, issues on the BPR implementation becomes a major concern. There are many reasons that make BPR project fails. To understand thoroughly the issues involved on BPR implementation failure, this section reviewed the primary barriers for effective BPR implementation. Attaran and Wood (1999) identified five primary obstacles to more effective BPR implementation. They are misunderstanding of the concept, misapplication of the term, lack of proper strategy, management failure to change, and failing to recognize the importance of people. Attarans and Woods (1999) five primary obstacls underlying thought is appropriate. Such as BPR is not downsizing, automation, restructuring, or more of the same. It is dramatic revising of the organization process and changing the way in which work is carried out. BPR requires creative thinking and new perspective on the part of management, and top management must change their ways of thinking and develop new skills. Employees play an important role in the success of BPR. Hence, employees fear about job displacement due to newly redesigned process and coping with resistance to BPR changing needs to be alleviated. Without an effective approach to deal with employees involved in the BPR effort, the implementation is certain to fail. Attaran (2000) advanced the above discussed five primary obstacles (Attaran and Wood, 1999) to eight. The author also clarified the difference between success and failure as not depend on the company size or resources, but on appropriate planning and avoidance of pitfalls. The additional three primary obstacles are lack of flexibility in terms of existing rigid infrastructure of the organization; lack of organizational communication to loop feedbacks for employees to air their concerns; and failure to test the process to understand the impact of any process change. At the end, Attaran (2000) concluded that organization often fail to achieve BPR objectives because they trivialize the concept and ignoring the pitfalls can be dangerous because it makes the BPR effort just another shot lived improvement. 10

On the top of the above mentioned factors, Al-Mashari and Zairi (1999) recognized that the implementation process of BPR is complex and needs to be checked against several success and failure factors to ensure successful implementation, as well as to avoid implementation pitfalls. In their review of both soft and hard factors that cause success and failure of BPR effort, they had identified five dimensions, such as change management, management competency and support, organizational structure, project planning and management, IT infrastructure. Also they had distilled the five success and failure factors in to thirty three and twenty two subgroups, respectively (see appendix 1). The above mentioned factors for the failure of BPR implementation suggest that BPR implementation process constrained by various factors. However, the exact relationships between these factors and BPR implementation failure (success), and the magnitude of different factor for the implementation failure remained as open, that need to be addressed. So far, reviews of literature regarding to BPR theory presented the following section presents empirical studies on BPR. 2.2 Empirical studies on BPR As indicated previously, organizations adopt BPR for better performance. The driving factors to undertake BPR may traced to the three Cs of change, competition and customers (Hammer and Champy, 1993). Starting from the introduction of BPR at the beginning of 1990s, issues rearing to BPR increased and various researchers had undertaken studies on it, to date. In this section selected empirical studies on BPR reviewed. Research carried out by Ahmad et al. (2007) showed critical success factors of BPR in Malaysia higher education institutions. The study used a case study based on open ended interviews to the top management and BPR team of the three selected private higher education in Malaysia. The findings highlighted that seven factors were critical for the successful implementation of BPR. The factors are team work and quality culture, quality management system and satisfactory rewards, effective change management, less bureaucratic and participative, IT or information system, effective project management, and adequate financial resources. In general, their 11

study provides important lessons as a condition for the success of BPR project. Whereas, they had override other factors for the success of BPR implementation, such as misunderstanding of the concept and misapplication of terms of BPR that were outlined by Attaran and Wood (1999), flexibility and communication that were outlined by Attaran (2000). As such, it is difficult to limiting critical success factors in to seven. Allen and Fiefield (1999) studied the applicability of BPR to higher institution in the UK along with factors that affect the change process of BPR. In doing so, the researchers adopted case study approach on five selected universities of UK and gathered data through seven structured interviews from project stakeholders in the universities undergoing BPR programs. At the first glance, the researchers identified a range of factors that make implementing BPR in these universities a difficult process. Those factors are senior management approval, complex information requirements, institutional policies and entrenched values, academic freedom, inertia, business process improvement (conservative change programs), IT driven change, maintaining the status quo, failure to reengineer human resources, and organizational transformation. The findings drawn from the study (Allen and Fiefield, 1999) are that the organizational culture and structure of higher education institutions limit the degree of change sought from BPR and insufficient attention given to the human resources side of change management. And the selected five universities are for the most part of implementing represent a limited approximation of BPR techniques. In other words, the undertaken BPR project is not about radically changing the organization by obliterating existing processes, instead it is process improvement. The radical change of BPR conflicted with the organizational factors mentioned previously. Particularly, the power of academic departments, the professional status of academics and inertia within the universities make radical changing unlikely.

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2.3 Conclusion and knowledge gap Organizations required responding to changing environments through various management tools; and BPR is one of the management tool undertaken by organizations to enhance their performance. Beside this, the concept of BPR was first introduced by Hammer (1990) and Davenport and Short (1990) as a result of globalization and extraordinary pace of IT development with the three driving forces of customers, competition, and change. Various organization employed BPR in pursuit of improved performances and to respond to changing environment. Since education institutions function like other type of businesses, BPR also used by education institutions in Malaysia, New Zealand, Spain, UK, and USA (Sohail et al., 2006; Balaji, 2004; Adenso-Diaz and Canteli, 2004; Allen and Fifield, 1999; Casey, 1995). Despite the increased use of BPR in various organization resulted enhanced performance, not all organization realized the promises of BPR. According to Hammer and Champy (1993) estimate, about 70 percent of BPR project failed. Various authors (Al-Mashari and Zairi, 1999; Attaran, 2000) mentioned numerous failure factors of BPR. Such as: misunderstanding of BPR concepts, misapplications of BPR terms, management failure to change, etc. The study conducted by Ahmad et al. (2007) showed that seven factors contribute for the success of BPR project for Malaysias higher education institution. Allen and Fiefield (1999) study indicate that factors that were not identified by other researchers, such as academic freedom and complex information requirements. As per the researcher knowledge, there is no comprehensive study on BPR implementation challenges in Ethiopia. Thus, this gap leads to originate the following research question and a need to study on BPR implementation challenges: What are the various factors Samara University faced challenges to implement BPR and their magnitudes to affect BPR implementation?

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Chapter 3: Research design The previous chapter presented reviews of literature on BPR along with various factors as barrier to implement BPR. Regarding to Ethiopian higher education institution, Samara University in specific, the literature review confirms that there is no studies on BPR implementation challenges. The purpose of this chapter is to present the research questions, the main principles of research methodology and the choice of the appropriate research method for the proposed study, respectively presented in this chapter. 3.1 Research questions As mentioned in chapter 1, the purpose of the study is to identify the factors that lead to face challenges to implement BPR at Samara University and to better understand the magnitude of the identified factors. To achieve the intended purposes as well as the research problem the research questions developed in this section. Factors that affect BPR implementation varied from organization to organization. Beside this, the characters and magnitudes of various factors varied among organizations. Thus, the following three research questions developed as follow. RQ1. What are the challenging factors that the university faces to implement BPR? Why Samara University does faced challenges to implement BPR? RQ2. RQ3. How do those factors affect BPR implementation at the University? What is the magnitude of each factor that affects the Universitys BPR project? 3.2 Research design There are three types of research design: quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods designs. Quantitative research is a means for testing objective theories by examining the relationship among variables. On the other hand, qualitative research is a means for exploring and understanding the meaning individuals or groups ascribe to a social or human problem. Between the two strands, mixed methods research is an approach 14

to inquire that combines or associates both quantitative and qualitative designs (Creswell 2009, p. 4). However, the selection of a research design involves the considerations of the worldview assumptions the research brings to study, research problem nature, procedures of inquiry, the researcher experience, audiences for the study, and data collection methods, analysis and interpretation (Creswell 2009, p. 3). As tried to indicate the types of research design and their meaning previously, quantitative and qualitative designs have distinct characters, while mixed methods design shares the characters of both designs. The research design involves the interactions of philosophical worldview, strategies of inquiry, and specific methods for the quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods design (Creswell 2009, p. 5). The following sections discussed the philosophical worldview, strategies of inquiry, and methods for each types of research in which it will help to choose for the proposed study. Quantitative research design possesses the postpositivist worldview assumption that encompasses deterministic philosophy in which causes probably determine the effect, and reductionistic philosophy to reduce the ideas into a small, discrete set of ideas to test variables that comprise hypotheses and research questions. Postpositivism develop knowledge based on objective observation and measurement as well as verify theories that govern the world (Creswell 2009, p. 7). Quantitative design employs strategies of inquiry such as survey and experiment, and collect data through standardized instruments that are close-ended question and numeric data. Using statistical method it generalizes about the population from the sample (Creswell 2009, p. 145-152). Qualitative research design possesses social constructivism worldview assumptions that holds individuals seek to understand the world in which they live and work. The participant views relied and participants construct meanings and the researcher inductively develops theory or pattern of subjective meaning (Creswell 2009, p. 8). Qualitative research design tries to assess experiences and events contextually within the participants natural setting. It employs strategies of inquiry like ethnographies, 15

grounded theory, case study, phenomenological research and narrative research and collect data through observation, interviews, text and image data that are open-ended and emerging. The findings are subjective that the inquirer inductively generates meanings from the data collected in the field (Creswell 2009, p. 11-13). Mixed methods design possesses the pragmatic worldview that focused on the research problem for the consequence of actions. Pragmatic worldview uses pluralistic approach to drive knowledge about the problem. Accordingly, researchers have a freedom to choose the methods, techniques, and procedures of research that best suits the purposes of the study. Thus, mixed method design involves philosophical assumptions to use the mix of quantitative and qualitative designs (Creswell 2009, p. 10). It employs strategies of inquiry such as sequential, concurrent and transformative mixed method and both close and open ended, standardized and emerging, quantitative and qualitative data collected. In general, quantitative and qualitative designs have their own inherent advantages and disadvantages. Although the advantages and disadvantages of them not discussed here, mixed methods design emanated to utilize the advantages and to tackle the disadvantages of the two designs. As cited in Creswell (2009, p. 14), the concept of mixing different methods originated in 1959 when Campbell and Fisk used multimethods to study validity of psychological traits. The reasons for mixing methods includes to triangulate data source for the sake of convergence across quantitative and qualitative methods; to integrate or combine the quantitative and qualitative data to identify participants or questions to ask for the other method or to reinforce each other; or transformative to advocate marginalized groups (Creswell 2009, p. 14). Having these, several studies on BPR in terms of research design, used quantitative and qualitative designs. In the case of BPR implementation in higher education, researchers like Ahmad et al., 2007; Sohail et al., 2006; Balaji, 2004; Allen and Fiefield, 1999 used qualitative research design. On the other hand, studies on BPR implementation in other industries, researchers like Tennant and Yi-Chieh, 2005; Terziovskia et al., 2002; ONeill and Sohal, 1998 used quantitative research design. 16

These practices suggest that both types of research designs could be applicable to study BPR implementation. Thus, as indicated in chapter 1, section 1.1 and 1.3, the study will use the mixed methods design to get the benefits of mixed methods design. The following sections discussed the proposed method adopted. 3.2.1 Research method adopted As indicated earlier, to get a brief understanding of the research problem and to benefit from the method adopted, mixed method design will be used to study the Samara Universitys challenges to implement BPR. Beside this, sequential explanatory strategy will be used. This strategy is characterized by the collection and analysis of quantitative data in a first phase of research followed by the collection and analysis of qualitative data in a second phase that builds on the result of the initial quantitative results (Creswell 2009, p. 211). Thus, in the first phase of the study, survey will be used to identify factors that affect BPR implementation. And in a second phase, results from the first phase will be used further to better understand the magnitude of identified factors. The following sections discussed the quantitative and qualitative feature of mixed methods that will be used during the study. 3.2.1.1 Quantitative feature of mixed method In a first phase, the quantitative feature of research design will identify factors that affect BPR implementation at Samara University. The following subsections presented the strategy of inquiry; sampling design; survey instrument; variables, research questions and items on a survey; and data analysis and interpretation. Survey design To gather data relevant for the identification of factors that affect BPR implementation, the study will employ survey strategy through self administered structure questionnaires with BPR project team members of the University. In this strategy, data will be collected one point in time (cross sectional). The rationale to adopt survey strategy is the economy of the design and the rapid turnaround in data collection. Particularly, the later one (rapid turnaround) will fits the sample that will be selected from BPR redesign and implementation team members, because all team members, except one individual, not available at the university premises (e.g. 17

educational leave). Thus, the respondents will be surveyed using e-mail questionnaires to reach dispersed geographical area that the respondents reside. Sample design To study the Universitys BPR project, the study population units will constitutes Universitys service providers and users. However, defining the study population and study units depend on the research problem and study objectives (Walonick, 2005). Thus, unless the University implemented BPR, all service providers and users will not be the population. So, the population study units constitute individuals directly involved with BPR project and the sampling frame ought to be list of individuals involved with the University BPR project - in number twenty-three individuals. Although in quantitative design to select sample advised to use random sampling (Creswell 2009, p. 148), in this study due to small number of population (23 in numbers) the sample selection will tend to use non-probability sample. As Babble (1990) noted non-probability sample in which respondents are chosen based on their convenience and availability (cited in Creswell 2009, p. 148). So, the study proposed to select respondents based on the convenience sample and respondents will be selected who are willing and available to complete the survey. In addition, the population stratified in to two groups before selecting the sample redesign team members and implementation team members. As indicated in the chapter 1, the University redesigned five processes, wherein two individual from each five processes (ten individuals) will be selected based on the convenience. That is one individual used to as redesign and implementation team member, and the other one is selected only used to as redesign team member. This will help to identify factors related during the redesign phase and implementation phase as challenges. Survey instrument The questionnaire instrument will be developed from comprehensive literature review that related to BPR implementation and its barriers to implement successfully, for now tentative sample questionnaire provided in Appendix II. The survey instrument will be closed ended designed to collect quantitative data. Beside this, the cover page of the instrument will indicate the purpose of the study, the importance of their 18

responses to the study along with the confidentiality, procedures to mark their responses and emphasize to return the instrument within the response period with. Email addresses of respondents will be acquired from the University Human Resource Department. And in order to ensure highest response rate, respondents will be asked their willingness to participate to the study through email letter before the questionnaire emailed. After getting their willingness and questionnaire developed, questionnaires will be forwarded to the respondents through email. Variables, research questions and items on a survey The following table presents the independent variable and dependent variable of the study with the research questions and items on the survey instrument. Variable name Research questions Items of the survey Survey instrument question: 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, and 24 Dependent variable: Challenges to implement BPR Research question: Why Samara University does face challenges to implement BPR? Survey instrument question: 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, and 11

Independent variable: Research question: What are the Factors related to implement BPR challenging factors that the university faces to implement BPR?

Table 1: Variables, research questions and items on a survey Data analysis and interpretation At the first glance, the numbers of sample who did and did not returned the questionnaire will be reported with tabular presentation in terms of numbers and percentages to describe respondents and non-respondents. To check the response bias, respondent non-respondent check will be employed and all non-respondents will be communicated through email letter, if they are out of the home country, otherwise via phone. For the purpose of obtaining information for the quantitative research question, the survey responses will be analyzed through statistical tools. To analyze responses of Yes/No and Agree/Disagree frequency percentage will be used to get the rated 19

responses. As well as data collected will be analyzed through simple percentage analysis, mean and regression analysis. Tables and graphs will be used to give a clear view of the distribution of the responses that will be given by the respondents to each question in the questionnaire. 3.2.1.2 Qualitative feature of mixed method As earlier mentioned this study will employ two phase- sequential explanatory strategy. In a first phase quantitative data will be gathered through questionnaires survey. The data further will be used in a second phase of qualitative research. Accordingly, the connection or mixing will occur between quantitative data analysis and the data collection of second phase research. Therefore, the analysis of quantitative data and its results will help to prepare qualitative interview questions. In this regard, the identified factors that impede the BPR implementation will be further used to better understand their magnitude as challenges to implement BPR at Samara University. To gather data for the second phase, case study strategy will be used to inquire the research problem through face-to-face interviews with selected respondents. Hence, in qualitative design the sampling design is purposeful sampling design; the interviewee will be the university president and two vice presidents. Before conducting the interview, the respondents willingness will be asked first. After getting their willingness and schedules, the researcher will interview the respondents at Samara University using interview protocol and by making handwriting notes. Thus three interviews will be held, the questions will be used could be emerging to ensure all key areas of the topic to be covered. Qualitative data collected from respondents will be noticed in to appropriate contexts and written down, and will be assigned codes based on topic or theme. Potentially the themes will be broken down into fragments. Codes which have been applied to the data then act as interpretations.

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Chapter 4: Significant, delimitation, final structure, work plan, and budgeted cost of the study 4.1 Significant of the study The subject matter of this proposed study at the completion will benefits different classes of groups including the management body of the University, because it will draws attention where corrective action is necessary to implement BPR. Also it will add value to those who would like to pursue their research on BPR, because the introduction of BPR in Ethiopia is a recent phenomenon. 4.2 Delimitation of the study The paper will provide a framework for future research to explore the Universitys BPR project along with the documents prepared by the redesign team members in which this proposed study not considered. 4.3 Final structure of the study The final structure of the study report will have four chapters. Chapter one will presents the introduction part of the study that constitutes overview, statement of problems, purposes of the study and report structure. Chapter two will presents comprehensive literature review with theory and empirical study. Chapter three will presents both the quantitative and qualitative features of the mixed method data analysis and interpretation sequentially. Finally, chapter four will presents conclusion and recommendation. 4.4 Work plan Generally, the study will take about three months starting from September 2010 to the end of November 2010. And all tasks will be performed by the researcher and the tasks includes from securing funds to the final report communication. The detailed tasks presented in the appendix section of 3. 4.5 Budgeted cost Most often, it is appropriate to have fund to undertake the study. So, approximately Birr 3,593 budgeted to conduct the study and the detailed cost breakdowns presented in appendix 4.

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Reference Adenso-Diaz, B and Canteli, A F 2001, Business Process Reengineering and University Organisation: a normative approach from the Spanish case, Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, Volume 23, Issue 1, pages 63 73, http://pdfserve.informaworld.com/827202_788608769_

713678150.pdf, viewed in June 2010 Ahmad, H, Francis, A and Zairi, M 2007, Business process reengineering: critical success factors in higher education, Emerald Publisher: Business Process Management Journal, Vol. 13 Iss: 3, pp.451 469,

http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?issn=14637154&volume=13&is sue=3&articleid=1610786&show=pdf, viewed in June 2010 Allen, D K. and Fifield, N 1999, Re-engineering change in higher education, Information Research, Vol. 4 No. 3, http://informationr.net/ir/4-

3/paper56.html, viewed in June 2010 Al-Mashari, M and Zairi, M 1999, BPR implementation process: an analysis of key success and failure factors, Emerald Publisher: Business Process Management Journal, Vol. 5 Iss: 1, pp.87 112,

http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?issn=14637154&volume =5&issue=1&articleid=843427&show=pdf,viewed in June 2010 Attaran, M 2000, Why does reengineering fail? A practical guide for successful implementation, Emerald Publisher: Journal of Management Development, Vol. 19 Iss: 9, pp.794 801 www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/html/Out put/.../0260190904.pdf, viewed in June 2010 Attaran, M and Wood, G 1999, How to succeed at reengineering, Emerald Publisher: Management Decision, Vol. 37 Iss: 10, pp.752 757, http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?issn=00251747&volume=37&is sue=10&articleid=865108&show=pdf, viewed in June 2010 Balaji, M 2004, Reengineering an Educational Institute: a Case Study in New Zealand, Working Paper No. 2 http://www.crie.org.nz/research_paper /M.Balaji_WP2.pdf, viewed in June 2010

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Casey, J M 1995, A Strategic Business Improvement Model for Higher Education. Move Over TQM--Here Comes BPR, Education Resource Information Center: Forty-Fourth Annual Conference of the Southeastern Regional Association of Physical Plant Administrators of Universities and Colleges Norfolk, Virginia, http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED388126.pdf, viewed in June 2010 Creswell J W 2009, Qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods approaches, third edition, SAGE Publication Inc., United State of America Davenport, T H and Short, J E 1990, The New Industrial Engineering: Information Technology and Business Process Redesign, MIT Sloan Management Review, http://sloanreview.mit.edu/the-magazine/articles/1990/summer/3141 /the-new-industrial-engineering-information-technology-and-business-process -redesign/ viewed in June 2010 Hammer, M 1990, Reengineering Work: Don't Automate, Obliterate, Harvard Business Review, http://www3.uma.pt/filipejmsousa/ge/Hammer,%

201990.pdf, viewed in June 2010 Hammer, M and Champy, J M 1993, Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution, Nicholas Brealey Publishing: Allen and Urwin, London ONeill, P and Sohal, A S 1998, Business process reengineering: application and success an Australian study, Emerald Publisher: International Journal of Operations & Production Management, Vol. 18 No. 9/10, 1998, pp. 832-864, http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?issn=01443577&volume=18&is sue=9/10&articleid=849138&show=pdf, viewed in June 2010 Revenaugh, D. L 1994, Business Process Re-engineering: The Unavoidable Challenge, Emerald Publisher: Management Decision, Vol. 32 Iss: 7, pp.16 27 http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?issn=0025-1747&volum e=32&issue=7&articleid=864723&show=pdf, viewed in June 2010 Sohail, M S, Daud, S and Rajadurai, J 2006, Restructuring a higher education institution: A case study from a developing country, Emerald Publisher: International Journal of Educational Management, Vol. 20 Iss: 4, pp.279 23

290, http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?issn=0951354X &volume =20&issue=4&articleid=1556824&show=pdf&PHPSESSID=oo9vdonkkvlb9l toul4qjbmle0, viewed in June 2010 Tanoglu, I 2004, Business Process Reengineering: A literature survey report, www.mis.boun.edu.tr/erdem/mis517/projects-03/BPR.doc, viewed in June 2010 Tennant, C and Yi-Chieh W 2005, The application of business process reengineering in the UK, Emerald Publisher: The TQM Magazine, Vol. 17 Iss: 6, pp.537 545, http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?issn=0954-478X&volume =17&issue=6&articleid=1524121&show=pdf, viewed in June 2010 Terziovskia, M, Fitzpatrick, P and ONeill, P 2002, Successful predictors of business process reengineering (BPR) in financial services, Int. J. Production Economics 3550, http://asia.edu.tw/~psuhjw/paper/bpr-7.pdf, viewed in June 2010 United States General Accounting Office (GAO) 1997, Business Process Reengineering Assessment Guide, Accounting and Information Management Division, http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/npr/library/gao/bprag.pdf, viewed in June 2010 Walonick, S D 2005, Elements of a research proposal and report,

http://www.statpac.com/rese arch-papers/research-proposal.htm#chapter-1

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Appendix: 1- Summary of key success/failure factors in BPR

Figure 1: A summary of key success/failure factors in BPR (source: Al-Mashari and Zairi, 1999) 25

Appendix: 2- Survey instrument BPR implementation challenges survey The study is entitled Challenges to implement BPR at Samara University. The researcher is Naod Mekonnen, who is currently M.Sc. in Accounting and Finance student in Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The purpose of the study is to identify the factors that lead to face challenges to implement BPR and to better understand the magnitude of the identified factors at Samara University. Thus, to carry out this study sample of BPR redesign and implementation team members selected because the study needs your participation to respond for the questionnaire and the result obtain from the questionnaire further studied to better understand the magnitudes of challenges that the university faced to implement BPR. The questionnaire results will be recorded namelessly and confidentiality will be preserved. Responses name will not be included in the study report. At the end of the study the summery of the study will be forwarded to you through your e-mail address. Marking and return procedures: To mark your responses please use text highlighter or font color, and as much as possible within three weeks return the questionnaire by the address given bellow. Example of marking procedure: 1. Which one best describe your .(if your choice is b mark b and save the document) a. XXXXXX b. YYYYYY c. ZZZZZZZ

Thank you in advance Naod Mekonnen E-mail: naod@mail2rap.com 26

1. Which category best describe your position during BPR project of the university. a. Redesign team member b. Redesign team member and implementation team member 2. Which one best describe the time frame to implement BPR full at the university a. Less than one year b. Between one year - to - two years c. Between two years to three years d. Between three years to four years e. More than four years 3. BPR project of the University being too costly undertake. a. Not strongly agree b. Not agree c. Agree d. Strongly agree 4. Which of the followings are expectation of changes as a result of BPR implementation (you can choose more than one items). a. Cost reduction of the processes b. Decreased process time cycle c. Increased use of technology in processes d. Increased use of human resources in the process 5. Who is responsible for the implementation of BPR (you can choose more than one items)? a. Redesign team members selected as implementation team members b. Top managements c. Universitys employees other than redesign team members d. External consultants 6. Which area of the University difficult to change through BPR? a. Administrative area b. Academic area

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7. Dou you agree that if the university implemented BPR successfully will benefit from better performance? a. Not strongly agree b. Not agree c. Agree d. Strongly agree 8. The universitys processes extremely redesigned that in turn leads to face challenges to implement BPR. a. Agree b. Not agree 9. The university being convinced the need for BPR before BPR project starts. a. Yes b. No 10. The reason for BPR project initiatives of the University caused by the felt need of change of high demand for the services offered by the University. a. Yes b. No 11. The fundamental source of difficulty for the university struggling to implement BPR is the fact that processes get reengineering and management does not. a. Not strongly agree b. Not agree c. Agree d. Strongly agree 12. Universitys employees resistance to change and their fears about job displacement need to be alleviated and explained for success of BPR implementation. a. Yes b. No

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13. Do you think that the organizational cultural change initiate for the success of BPR implementation at the University. a. Yes b. No 14. Total involvements of top management who have real power to change absolutely necessary to implement. a. Agree b. Disagree 15. Failure to implement BPR caused by lack of support demonstrated by the University highest level management a. Agree b. Disagree 16. Do you think that existing infrastructure of the University paused the implementation process. a. Yes b. No 17. Lack of organizational communication contributes to the challenges of BPR implementation. a. Yes b. No 18. What role has information technology played to the University redesigned processes? a. No role b. Minimal role c. Enabling role d. Extreme driving force 19. Customer feed back used during the redesign phase a. Yes b. No

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20. Lack of financial resources contributes to the failure of BPR. a. Agree b. Disagree 21. Lack of information technology infrastructure results BPR implementation failure. a. Not strongly agree b. Not agree c. Agree d. Strongly agree 22. Insufficient trainings on BPR implementation contribute to the failure of BPR project. a. Not strongly agree b. Not agree c. Agree d. Strongly agree 23. Ineffective BPR teams contribute to the failure of BPR project. a. Not strongly agree b. Not agree c. Agree d. Strongly agree 24. Existing governmental proclamations, regulations, rules and directive contribute to the failure of BPR. a. Not strongly agree b. Not agree c. Agree d. Strongly agree 25. There is little chance of implementing BPR at the University. a. Not strongly agree

b. Not agree c. Agree d. Strongly agree 30

Appendix: 3 - Work plan of the study

Activities/tasks

Duration in months Sep, 2010 Oct, 2010 Nov, 2010

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Securing fund Comprehensive literature review Developing the final questionnaire Acquiring email addresses and sample selection Asking respondents willingness to participate through email Emailing questionnaires to respondent and receiving questionnaire response Quantitative data analysis and interpretation Qualitative interview question preparation Asking the interviewee for willingness Researcher voyage from Addis Ababa to Samara Conducting interview with the university president and two vice presidents Researcher voyage from Samara to Addis Ababa Qualitative data analysis and interpretation Final report writing along with conclusion and recommendation Communication the final finding

Gantt Chart1: Detail work plan 31

Appendix: 4 - Budgeted cost of the study Items Measurement Paper Pen Pencil Laptop rental1 Printing Transportation2 Per dium3 Mobile card4 Sub total Contingency (10 % of subtotal) Grand total Table 2: Detail budgeted cost 1 realm 1 dozen dozen 3 month 60 pages 2 voyage 10 days 1 card

Price (Birr) 60 24 12 15birr/day 2birr/page 200 birr/voyage 120 Birr/day 100 Birr/ card

Total price (Birr) 60 24 12 1350 120 400 1200 100 Birr 3266 326.6 Birr 3592.6

To have portable data processing, storage and retrieval computer to the researcher till the final report communication 2 From Addis Ababa to Samara and vice versa to interview University presidents at Samara University 3 Since the University located in very hot part of Ethiopia, it is appropriate to have desert perdium 4 To communicate with the University Human Resource Department to get email addresses of the team members and to communicate to get the willingness of the presidents.

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