Abstract
This thesis is based on recent research in the field of Business Transformation (BT) and is testing out the relevance of methodologies in today’s environment. The study aims to test the impact of employee roles’ restructuring as part of Business Redesign (BR) Target Operating Models (TOM) on the outcomes of BR Projects and to revisit the current challenges and opportunities of applying BR within the British business context.
Initial research in the field of BT has revealed that organisations adopt BR approaches in order to reduce costs, improve performance and productivity and to achieve competitive advantage. However, there is no apparent evidence of significant development in the area of BR methodologies since it was introduced as a concept over three decades ago. There have been debates around actual success rates and whether the benefits are worth the considerable investment and risks. Authors commonly estimate that between 50-70% of all re-engineering projects fail.
Practitioners and academics focussed in the main on researching the success factors, the role of IT, Methodologies and the financial aspects of BR, however not so much on the stages of implementation and post implementation. Human Resource Management (HRM) and Leadership do not feature as strategic partners in the BR methodologies reviewed which is considered a major oversight, given the importance of leadership and human resources which have to deliver the new processes as well as the need to redesign the organisation and the roles within it to fit the new design.
The Theoretical Analysis highlighted the challenges and issues associated with current practices and methodologies and four propositions were subsequently formulated highlighting these potential roles and relationships. The main proposition is to explore the concept of Employee Re-engineering (ER) which involves the restructuring and redesign of employees’ roles within the organisations as a fundamental part of BR TOMs, in order to take advantage of human resource and to improve the organisation’s overall performance. The other propositions presented the main elements of ER namely, the role of the workforce whether these should be involved in the new design and the importance of HRM and leadership as strategic partners in BR projects’ implementation These propositions were explored in a comparative case study between two transformation teams, operating both internally and externally. Based on the findings, it was possible to provide the following answer to the research question: involving ER in BR TOMs improves overall project outcomes. The study is unique in that it is the first to empirically introduce and investigate ER as a new approach in BR projects’ implementation as well as developing and validating a more holistic model of BR. In any event developing current theories of BR by covering gaps in literature and investigating the high levels of failure in BR projects contributes to raising awareness of current empirical challenges and updates the academic knowledge on the most recent progress.