The Practice of Business Process Reengineering In Selected Ministries of Ethiopia and Bureaus of the Amhara Region
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Date
2008-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The Ethiopian Civil Service has been suffering from long and time consuming service de livery
and obsolete management structures which hampered its efficiency and effectiveness since its
establishment. In order to alleviate these problems and enable the civil service play the role the
society requires of it, the Government of the FDRE initiated the Service Delivery Improvement
Policy under the comprehensive Civil Service Reform Program in2001. This study was
conducted to assess the practices of BPR, one of the tools of the CSRP, in two federal ministries
and two bureaus of the Amhara National Regional State. An attempt was made to examine the
efforts of the organizations in terms of planning and readiness to change and the extent to which
the change was implemented. A brief review of the related literature has been made to lay the
theoretical background. Through descriptive survey method, data were gathered from 45 team
members, 4 BPR leaders, and 161 other employees selected using random, purposive and
availability sampling techniques as appropriate. Data gathered through questionnaires,
interviews and focus group discussions were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively.
Frequency counts, mean differences and the i test for significance of differences were used in
the analysis. The results of the study indicated that the attempts made to show the purpose and
benefits of reengineering were not satisfactory as evidenced by employees' poor understanding
of the principles and the multi-dimensional changes of BPR. The criteria used to select the
members of different teams didn't meet most of the requirements. Most employees have
developed negative attitude towards BPR as the result of poor change communication and
unsuccessful previous reform experiences. However, a significant difference was observed in the
distribution of preference concerning attitudinal items between design team members and other
employees who were not involved in such responsibilities. Major success factors such as
consensus about the change, involvement of key stakeholders, effective communication, strength
and commitment of people involved in the change process were not suffiCiently available in the
organizations. Previous experience and adequate understanding of BPR prinCiples, benchmark
partners, and necessary skills and cmnpetence to run the project were observed as defiCiencies,
even though not at their worse. The strength in the organizations was the political commitment
towards serving the public efficiently and effectively. On the other hand, some weaknesses were
observed ill areas such as timely accomplishment, producing Whacko ideas, change
communication, sustained management commitment and effective leadership, the attention given
to training and stakeholders' involvement. On top of this, organizing a series of visionary
workshops to clearly show the necessity of the change and its targets, and different trainings at
three levels to help accomplish the transition of the organizations; establishing a resource
center at the federal level and help centers at the organization 's level in order to facilitate the
access of information and help whenever and wherever reqUired; and working in joint with
higher education and management institutions in terms of training, research and change
management techniques were suggested as indispensable ways to effect the intended change.
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Keywords
time consuming service delivery