عوامل بحرانی موفقیت برای مهندسی مجدد کسب و کار و عملکرد شرکت ها : شرکت های کره ای

This article briefly reviews the literature on business reengineering (BR), analyzes critical success factors (CSFs) for BR, develops a BR-CSFs model, empirically tests the model on Korean firms, and investigates the impact of BR on corporate performance in Korea. Many Korean firms are attempting to transform from Japanese- to American-style business management. As part of this process, BR has gained substantial critical mass as the first widely accepted American-born management methodology accepted in Korea. While Western-based BR methodologies provide general procedures and techniques the CSFs listed in this research focus on the key factors that Korean firms generally confront. In the present research, 20 CSFs, taken from a literature review were divided into four categories: strategic, organizational, methodological, and technological/educational. A survey was developed to assess the firm-specific importance and development of each of these CSFs. Survey responses from 162 Korean corporations indicate a positive association between the designated CSFs and corporate performance. Korean BR team leaders and CEOs/COOS rate “strategic” and “methodological” CSFs as most important while “organizational” and “technological/educational” CSFs are considered less important, a rank ordering challenged by the authors.

Korean firms are generally interested in applying business reengineering (BR) methodologies to make themselves more competitive 1, 2 and 3. The underpinning philosophy is that Korean firms need to employ totally different business systems in today’s information society when compared to past industrial society. Also Korean managers tend to believe that their companies need more effective business systems to successfully respond to rapidly changing business environments, the increasing variety of customer needs, increasingly short product development cycles, and increasingly fierce global competition. Proactive Korean companies are utilizing BR to catalyze change from more traditional industrial business frameworks to more information-based business design 4 and 5. Business reengineering opens new dimensions to Korean firms in three main ways. First, it has been a common practice for Korean managers to consider Japanese methodologies more suitable to the Korean business environment since culture and business ethics are considered more similar in these two Asian nations when compared to the U.S 3, 6 and 7. Second, BR is the first American-born management methodology that is being widely accepted in Korea. Third, Korean firms and consulting companies realize that traditional American-style BR is generally not effective in Korea. Accordingly they have altered American-based BR methodologies while adding a Korean “flavor” to better suit BR to Korean business conditions. “Korean-style BR” is a well known business term in Korea. In the 1990s, Korean firms began to realize that efficient and effective innovation is a key survival strategy in the global marketplace. Process oriented BR is seen as necessary for business systems to be productive, responsive, adaptive, and timely 2 and 3. At the same time, early attempts at BR implementation have raised important questions of “how.” As a result, there has been steady growing demand, in Korea, for practical and specific BR implementation techniques and methodologies. The situation becomes more complex as each Korean corporation is seen to have its own unique business environment, culture, customer needs, constraints, and opportunities. While there have been a great number of successful BR cases presented in conferences and books 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 few empirical and systematic studies have been reported regarding critical success factors (CSFs) for BR as well as the impact of BR on corporate performance. The present research suggests successful BR implementation can be enhanced by a focus on specific CSFs. This article (1) briefly summarizes BR literature, (2) analyzes and introduces CSFs based on this literature review as well as on interviews with key Korean industry informants, and (3) empirically tests the validity of these CSFs while examining the impact of BR on the performance of the surveyed Korean firms.

Korean firms are moving from a traditional dependence on Japanese-style management to a greater appreciation for American-style management. Currently BR has gained substantial momentum as the most widely accepted American-born business management methodology in Korea. This article provides a summary of the literature on BR. From this review, as well as interviews with key Korean informants, a list of 20 CSFs is classified into the following four categories: strategic, organizational, methodological, and technological/educational. While BR methodologies provide general procedures and techniques to apply in BR projects, CSFs illustrate critical factors that should be emphasized depending on the situation. They can be used to focus proper management attention on the role specific CSFs play in the success of BR projects. A survey, based on the 20 CSFs, was used to investigate the impact of BR on corporate performance in Korea. Survey responses from 162 Korean corporations reveal that BR does generally enhance corporate performance. The data indicate that the proposed CSFs are valid and have explanatory power. A positive association is also seen to exist between the importance and preparedness dimensions of the CSFs. Analysis on these dimensions show that most Korean firms rate “strategic” and “methodological” CSFs as important and “prepared” while considering “organizational” and “technological and educational” CSFs as less important and less developed. These research results suggest that, in Korea, top management usually initiates BR projects without the internal consent of managers and employees. BR teams commonly do not have necessary techniques and methodologies to carry out BR projects successfully. Most Korean firms ask for outside consultants to provide the BR expertise. The fact that organizational CSFs are considered less important and somewhat undeveloped inhibits the success of Korean BR projects. These factors play an important role in soliciting innovative and breakthrough ideas, creating favorable atmosphere, minimizing resistance, implementing new designs into work, diffusing innovation to the rest of the company, and moving forward to the next desired target. Non-BR corporations show less development in most of the CSFs than BR corporations, especially when considering change management, education and training, sponsorship, direction and vision, implementation, and the role of IT. The empirically validated CSFs identify relevant factors that should be considered in designing and implementing, and measuring the impact of BR activities. It is suggested that corporations embarking on BR should evaluate themselves based in terms of CSFs, understand both their strong and weak points while focusing on strengthening the weak points to enable the implementation of major change efforts. On the one hand, this study has several important design and research limitations. First, even though BR CSFs have been extracted from an extensive literature review and validated through field research, there may be important factors that have not been considered. Second, unique factors of the Korean socio-economic environment, or context, are not considered in this study. Environmental complexity, politics, culture and policy, industry context, and financial conditions are major sources of uncertainty. Since the survey and interview data were collected in Korea, additional research in other cultural settings is required to evaluate the generalizabilty of the research findings. Third, additional conceptual and empirical work is needed to accurately measure the impact of BR, or other factors for that matter, on corporate performance. On the other hand, each of the above research limitations opens a wide spectrum of research opportunities such as including or controlling for environmental factors, cross-cultural research and comparisons, and a more detailed and long-term evaluation of successfully reengineered companies compared to unsuccessfully reengineered companies.