This empirical research focuses on exploring the role of strategic leadership in the shift from Electronic Government (eGovernment) to Transformational Government (tGovernment). Despite the fact that many countries have implemented eGovernment, the literature reports a number of themhave failed to reach the promised seamless transformation. Moreover, there is a dearth of research into the domain of tGovernment; the research which exists is limited in extent thus leaving scope for timely and novel research contributions. This thesis reveals that a valuable contribution to knowledge could be derived from exploring the domain of transformational government. The leadership motivationand incentives to conduct a radical government organisational change have become an area of great importance. There is limited research on the strategic role of leadership in achieving transformational government domain; hence, the implications of seamless integration for transformational government have yet to be explored. This research discusses transformational government by using a qualitative, multiple case study research strategy. Data is triangulated and analysed according to its explanatory properties and underlying structural context. This researchextends established norms in literature for tGovernment implementation by incorporating established theories in organisational change from other related disciplines. This is to explain the significance of the underlying philosophical nature of the emerging themes, thus enabling government leaders to create robust strategic proposals for tGovernment. This empirical research is conducted in a Middle Eastern cultural context based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The research arrives at several key findings and themesthat contribute to the body of knowledge. A primary finding is the need for a radical change and an innovative managerial approach in using ICT to enable radical change in government organisations. A related finding of this research is that many assumptions underlying the various tGovernment models for transformation fall short to empirically explain the transformational government domain. The government visionary leadership has been proven to be a powerful driver for change in terms of initiating and leading the process for transformational government.

Thesis (MBA)--Stellenbosch University, 2001. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: "Value adding process design" entails two underlying concepts, namely "business process" and "value adding": Business process: According to Dr Michael Hammer (Hammer, 1999), the recognised father of process thinking, a business process is an "organised group of related activities that together create customer value". The focus in the process is not on individual units of work, which by themselves accomplish nothing for a customer, but rather on an entire group of activities that, when effectively brought together, create a result that customers value. Value adding: The concept of "value adding" can be defined in different ways depending on the receiver of the value (shareholders, customers or employees). From a shareholder perspective, value adding can be measured by using EVA (Economic Value Added). EVA is a measure of economic profit generally meaning that a positive EVA indicates that value has been created, whereas a negative EVA means value has been destroyed. The perspective from which process improvement is addressed is the value that is added for the customer, but always with the constraint of not negatively impacting the EVA of the organisation. Value adding process design: "Value adding process" design entails the design of a business process or interrelated business processes to ensure that employee and customer needs are satisfied, whilst creating value for shareholders. The objective of this study is to develop a methodology and supporting tools to enable a organisation to make the transition from being task focused to becoming a truly process organisation. The approach that is proposed is the Rynmar VAP Diagnostic Tool. The approach consists of 5 phases, best explained by the metaphor of building a house: • Setting the stage (phase 0) is identifying the need for a house, i.e. being unhappy with the current situation to an extent that one has the burning desire to change surrounding, even if it will cost a lot of time, effort and financial resources. • Visioning (phase 1) is drawing an artist impression of the house. It involves thinking what the new house should look like, for example do I want a Cape-Dutch house with thatched roof and white walls, or an Italian design with tiled roof and off-white walls. Visioning is the magnetic force that one holds on to whenever the question is asked: "Is it worth the effort?" • Design Process (phase 2) entails applying different techniques to draw an architectural design of the firstly the current processes, followed by the future process that will meet the different aspects of the vision. • Prototype & Build (phase 3) involves firstly building a small scale model of the house to test and improve the design made in phase 3, followed by building the actual house. • Train & Implement (phase 4) firstly entails training the different people in the skills required by the new process design and then implementing the process under careful guidance of the project team, i.e. moving into the house. • Continuous Improvement (phase 5) involves continuously improving the process to ensure that incremental performance improvement is achieved, which will lead to a dramatic cumulative improvement over time. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: "Waarde toegevoeging proses ontwerp" behels twee onderliggende konsepte, naamlik "besigheidsproses" en "waarde toevoeging": Besigheidsproses: Volgens Dr Michael Hammer (Hammer, 1999), die erkende vader van prosesdenke, kan 'n besigheidsproses definieer word as 'n georganiseerde groep van aktiwiteite wat gesamentlik waarde skep vir 'n kliënt. Die fokus in die proses is nie op individuele komponente van werk nie, wat individueel niks vir die gebruiker kan vermag nie, maar eerder op 'n geïntegreerde groep van aktiwiteite wat, indien effektief gegroepeer word, waarde skep vir 'n kliënt. Waarde toevoeging: Die konsep "waarde toevoeging" kan op verskillende maniere gedefinieer word afhangende van die ontvanger van die waarde (aandeelhouers, kliënte of werknemers). Vanuit die perspektief van 'n aandeelhouer word waarde toevoeging gemeet deur gebruik te maak van EVA ("Economic Value Added'). EVA is 'n maatstaf van ekonomiese wins, wat daarop neerkom dat 'n positiewe EVA aandui dat waarde geskep (toegevoeg) is, terwyl 'n negatiewe EVA beteken dat waarde verwoes is (waardevermindering). Prosesverbetering word gevolglik daarop gerig om waarde toe te voeg vir 'n kliënt, maar altyd onderhewig daaraan dat dit 'n positiewe impak op die EVA van die organisasie sal hê. Waarde toegevoegde proses ontwerp: "Waarde toegevoegde proses ontwerp" behels die ontwerp van 'n besigheidsproses of verwante besigheidprosesse wat sal verseker dat daar aan die behoeftes van werknemers en kliënte voldoen word en terselftertyd dat waarde geskep word vir aandeelhouers. Die doelwit van hierdie studie is om 'n metodologie en ondersteunende gereedskap te ontwikkel wat 'n organisasie in staat stel om die transformasie te maak van 'n taak-georiënteerde na 'n ten volle proses-georiënteerde organisasie. Die benadering wat voorgestel word is die Rynmar VAP model. Die benadering bestaan uit vyf fases en kan verduidelik word aan die hand van die metafoor om 'n huis te bou: • Definieer 'n platform vir verandering (fase 0) is om die behoefte te identifiseer om 'n huis te bou, naamlik om ontevrede te wees met die huidige situasie tot so 'n mate dat 'n brandende begeerte bestaan om iets daaraan te doen, selfs al kos dit tyd, moeite en finansies. • Skep van 'n prosesvisie (fase 1) is om 'n kunstenaarsvoorstelling te maak van die huis. Dit sluit in hoe die nuwe huis moet lyk, byvoorbeeld 'n Kaaps-Hollandse huis met 'n grasdak en wit mure. 'n Visie is die magnetiese aantrekkingskrag wat 'n organisasie aan vasklou wanneer die vraag gevra word: "Is dit die moeite werd?" • Proses ontwerp (fase 2) behels die toepassing van verskillende tegnieke om 'n argitekstekening van eerstens die bestaande prosesse te maak, gevolg deur die ontwerp van toekomstige prosesse wat die visie sal verwesenlik. • Prototipering & bou (fase 3) behels die bou van 'n klein skaalmodel van die huis om die ontwerp te toets en verbetering aan te bring, gevolg deur die werklike bou van die huis. • Opleiding & implementering (fase 4) behels eerstens die opleiding van die betrokke partye, gefokus op die vaardighede wat benodig word om die nuwe proses te implementer. Vervolgens word die proses implementeer onder die waaksame oog van die projekspan, naamlik om in die huis in te trek. • Kontinue verbetering (fase 5) behels die kontinue verbetering van die proses wat sal verseker dat inkrementele verbetering behaal word, wat lei tot dramatiese verbetering opgebou oor tyd.

Business Process Management (BPM) is often adopted by organizations as a method to increase awareness and knowledge of their business processes. Business process modeling is used as a method to represent business processes in form of business process models. The number of organizations adopting BPM is quickly increasing. By this means, so is the number of business process models as result of a BPM initiative. Within a single organization the number of business process models often ranges from hundreds to even thousands. In order to handle such large amount of business process models, organizations structure them by the help of a process architecture. It includes a process map, which is considered as the top-most view of the process architecture where the organization's business processes and the relations between them are visually and abstractly depicted. The details of each business process shown on the process map are stored in the lower levels of the corresponding process architecture. The purpose of a process map is to provide an overview of how an organization operates as a whole without necessarily going into the process details. Therefore, the design of a process map is vital not only for the understanding of the company's processes, but also for the subsequent detailed process modeling. This is primarily because, a process map is often the result of the process identification phase of the BPM lifecycle, and is used as a foundation for the subsequent phases, where the detailed process modeling and process improvement takes place. Despite their importance, the design of process maps is still more art than science, essentially because there is no standardized modeling language available for process map design. As a result, we are faced with a high heterogeneity of process map designs from practice, although they all serve a similar purpose. This has accordingly been our main motivation for pursuing the research presented in this thesis. The research question for this thesis is the following: How to effectively model processes on an abstract level? In this thesis, we document the development of a language for designing process maps. In particular, we provide the following contributions. First, we present a holistic reference BPM framework. It is a consolidation of procedural frameworks introduced by prominent BPM researchers. The framework includes eleven BPM elements, each holding activities organizations need to consider when adopting BPM. Second, we provide a method for assessing cognitive effectiveness of process maps used in practice. For this, we follow the nine principles for cognitively effective visual notations introduced by Moody cite{moody2012physics}. In addition, we employ the cognitive fit theory to check whether the design of process maps has an effect on the BPM success in the respective organization. Second, we conduct a systematic literature review on the quality of modeling languages and models. We use the quality requirements we found as basis for developing the language for designing process maps. Third, we define the abstract syntax, semantics, and concrete syntax of the language for process maps. We follow an explorative method, hence we rely on empirical data for the language development. Accordingly, we reuse symbols in our language which have already been used in practice as part of process maps. We follow this approach in order to ensure the language will consist of elements already familiar to organizations. We evaluate the language by means of an experiment, in which we assess the effectiveness and efficiency of process maps designed using elements from our language against process maps that have not been designed using our language. Last, this thesis provides a method for testing the suitability of existing languages for specific purposes. (author's abstract)

In modern organisations business process modelling has become fundamental due to the increasing rate of organisational change. As a consequence, an organisation needs to continuously redesign its business processes on a regular basis. One major problem associated with the way business process modelling (BPM) is carried out today is the lack of explicit and systematic reuse of previously developed models. Enabling the reuse of previously modelled behaviour can have a beneficial impact on the quality and efficiency of the overall information systems development process and also improve the effectiveness of an organisation’s business processes. In related disciplines, like software engineering, patterns have emerged as a widely accepted architectural mechanism for reusing solutions. In business process modelling the use of patterns is quite limited apart from few sporadic attempts proposed by the literature. Thus, pattern-based BPM is not commonplace. Business process patterns should ideally be discovered from the empirical analysis of organisational processes. Empiricism is currently not the basis for the discovery of patterns for business process modelling and no systematic methodology for collecting and analysing process models of business organisations currently exists. The purpose of the presented research project is to develop a methodological framework for achieving reuse in BPM via the discovery and adoption of patterns. The framework is called Semantic Discovery and Reuse of Business Process Patterns (SDR). SDR provides a systematic method for identifying patterns among organisational data assets representing business behaviour. The framework adopts ontologies (i.e., formalised conceptual models of real-world domains) in order to facilitate such discovery. The research has also produced an ontology of business processes that provides the underlying semantic definitions of processes and their constituent parts. The use of ontologies to model business processes represents a novel approach and combines advances achieved by the Semantic Web and BPM communities. The methodological framework also relates to a new line of research in BPM on declarative business processes in which the models specify what should be done rather than how to ‘prescriptively’ do it. The research follows a design science method for designing and evaluating SDR. Evaluation is carried out using real world sources and reuse scenarios taken from both the financial and educational domains.

<p>Information technology (IT) is becoming the primary factordetermining the survival of most organizations. The differenttypes of systems and the wide range of objectives suggest thatdiverse evaluation methods are needed. There is a critical needfor a new approach to managing IT investments, and solving theinformation paradox should be a business imperative for allmanagers today.</p><p>Evaluating IT investments introduces different types ofproblems that investment in traditional assets does notconsider. The focal point shifts from measuring hard andquantifiable benefits that appear on a firm’s incomestatement to measuring soft, diffuse, and qualitativeimpact.</p><p>The decision to acquire new information technology poses anumber of serious evaluation problems for managers because theavailable methods for IT investment evaluation are mostlystatic and they do not consider dynamism in decision-makingprocesses.</p><p>Common problems with the methods for evaluating ITinvestments are related to their inability to take account ofthe full range of potential benefits. There is a gap betweentheory and practice in relation to the use of any method formaking decisions and for continuous evaluation of ITinvestments.</p><p>This thesis presents a new approach to evaluating benefitsof IT investments in a dynamic way, an approach consisting of acombination of dynamic information workflow models and businessprocess simulation techniques. The proposed approach givesmanagers and organizations the possibility of implementingother models for measuring different metrics and aspects of ITinvestments.</p><p>A dynamic information workflow model of an electric utilityandsimulation essays are presented in order to show how theproposed approach is applied. The performance measure selectedfor running experiments was efficiency, which was characterizedby the following selected performance indicators: cycle time,resource utilization, and activity costs. Empirical data wascollected from case studies of different utilities in CentralAmerican countries.</p><p><b>Key words:</b>Business Process Modeling and Simulation,Evaluating IT Investments, Dynamic Information Workflow Model,Electric Utilities.</p>

無 / Global investment in process-management technology has vastly increased for the purpose of integrating both external and internal processes with aligned resources to adapt to the changing environment of the service-based economy. The management of business processes in the service-based economy requires dynamic capabilities in order to continuously integrate knowledge, coordinate activities, learn from experience, and reinvent services to acquire and retain customers. A growing pattern within the characteristics of path dependency has been observed in the development of process management capabilities, which evolved from awareness to optimization. This paper reports the findings of a study of the development of process-management capabilities in six companies across two different industries. By tracking the growth of its process-management capabilities, three points are made: (1) organizations develop their business process-management capabilities through five stages, which are awareness, repetition, standardization, management, and optimization; (2) each maturity level is characterized by different business focuses, process designs, knowledge management, measurement methods, and management attitudes; and (3) the development path is characterized by ups and downs and is influenced by both external and internal changes.

A doctoral thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of PhD of Loughborough University.

The objective of this thesis is to explore the design of operational processes in information-intensive service delivery systems. Empirical data is presented which builds upon existing literature within the Business Process Management (BPM) and Service Operations Management (SOM) disciplines. Adopting a theory building mode, the thesis concludes with the formulation of several research propositions which specify the design characteristics of the processes that provide the service concept to the customer. The research addresses a number of gaps in the literature. First, there is little empirical evidence concerning the relationship between the service concept, customer inputs, and process design. Second, service classification schemes promote homogeneous thinking in the design of service systems delivering diverse service concepts. Third, the BPM literature provides generic process design principles which offer limited theoretical insights into the design requirements of operational processes. Finally, there is a need for process design research in information-intensive service organisations. A research framework that integrates theoretical models addressing service process design is investigated using a single case study approach. Fieldwork was carried out over a sixteen-month period in a large electricity supplier in the UK. In contrast to the macro-orientation found within the literature, this study employs a more granular level of analysis to address the unique requirements of ‘service concept – processes’ pairs. This approach results in a number of important findings which, in several instances, are in contradiction to current thinking. First, the results empirically validate the theoretical relationship between service concept, customer inputs, and process design. Different service concepts lead to different process designs, and the more customised the service concept, the more the process is uniquely designed. Significant differences in the design of the individual processes that collectively provide the service concept to the customer are highlighted. The results also provide some new insights into the design of front office – back office activities as well as into the design characteristics of processes characterised by low customer contact. In addition, the study refutes the view that generic process design principles are universally applicable irrespective of the context in which the processes operate. Finally, the research findings show that a process-based view of service systems allows for heterogeneity; that is differences in the design of service delivery processes within the same organisation.

Ingeniero Civil en Computación / Hoy en día, el levantamiento de procesos de negocio es un mecanismo ampliamente difundido y utilizado para el entendimiento de reglas, problemáticas y características de empresas y su negocio. Hoy en día se identifican numerosos problemas asociados al levantamiento de procesos, muchos de los cuales tienen su origen en que el conocimiento sobre los procesos no esta formalizado y/o esta repartido entre diversos actores. Para enfrentar esto se existen varias técnicas que involucran el trabajo en terreno y la colaboración de varios participantes a la vez. El trabajo de esta memoria fue la construcción de una herramienta que apoye dichas técnicas, facilitando el trabajo del levantamiento y modelado en terreno y en forma colaborativa. Fue así como se construyó MOBIZ, aplicación que permite el trabajo concurrente de varios actores en el modelamiento de procesos a través de dispositivos móviles. Al ser construida HTML5, puede ser accedida desde casi cualquier dispositivo moderno común navegador, móvil o no. Entrega una interfaz diferenciada para equipos móviles y de escritorio, y gracias la creación del framework COUPLINGSERVER, se pudo abstraer completamente la aplicación misma de la comunicación con otros usuarios.

<p>U doktorskoj disertaciji su predstavljeni modeli za unapređenje<br />organizacione strukture i upravljanja poslovnim procesima i<br />upravljanje performansom poslovnih procesa. U prvom modelu su<br />razvijeni postupci analize, modelovanja, ocenjivanja i vrednovanja<br />postupaka unapređenja struktura i poslovnih procesa, a u drugom<br />modelu su postavljene faze planiranja, merenja i vizuelizacije<br />performansi poslovnih procesa. Primenjeni su savremeni softveri<br />za upravljanje procesima i njihovim performansama. Mogućnost<br />praktične primene razvijenih modela istražena je u dve studije<br />slučaja realnog idustrijskog uslužnog preduzeća.</p> / <p>In his doctoral dissertation, presented models for improving organizational<br />structures and business process management and performance<br />management business processes. In the first model developed methods of<br />analysis, modeling, assessment and evaluation procedures to improve the<br />structure and business processes, and in the second model are set phases<br />of planning, performance measurement and visualization of business<br />processes. Were applied modern software management processes and their<br />performance. A possible application of the developed model was investigated<br />in two case studies of real industrial service enterprise.</p>