Purpose – The purpose of this study is to advance the understanding of how project managers in large organizations can create an understanding for organizational changes by internal communication. Method – This research study has an abductive approach and was conducted as a single case study. The empirical data has been chosen to be qualitative since it gives the ability to explain, describe and understand the research questions. Observations set the direction of the research, and 17 semi-structured interviews were further conducted at the case company. Findings – The findings show that 'System functionality', 'Organizational value', 'Individual value' and 'Project value', are four different types of information desired by involved employees to have an understanding for an organizational change. These types of information have shown to most effectively, for a project manager, be communicated through the use of 'Standardized communication methods', 'Direct communication methods' with a 'Distinct communication transfer', to reach involved employees by internal communication. Theoretical implications – The study provides a framework for how, what, and to whom a project manager can create an understanding for all affected employees by internal communication. The framework proposes that the project manager is in the center of a communication structure and therefore plays a key role in communicating change. Practical implications – Our framework contributes by presenting findings that are more defined and practically oriented compared to prior studies, as we combine several factors and suggest how information could be internally communicated by a project manager during change. It shows that a mix of both in-person communication and digital communication methods with distinct communication responsibilities are required to reach all involved employees, thus creating less resistance towards an organizational change.

This thesis describes the development of a body of theory explaining why the principals of Australian software firms have difficulty in changing the organizational structures of their businesses. The need for change is predicated on the view that availability of capital is an essential prerequisite for sustainable growth in Australian software firms and that firm principals, in the main, have not implemented organizational structures preferred by Australian investors. A grounded theory approach is used, drawing upon personal knowledge of the software industry using sense making and self ethnography research methods. Personal knowledge is complemented with data from semi-structured interviews and secondary sources. Concepts developed from the data are related to theoretical and empirical work under the rubric of organization studies. What emerges from the data and the literature is: firstly, the Australian software industry is likely to consist of multiple organizational fields each one of which encompasses a small number of software firms servicing customers in specific vertical markets; secondly, to attract capital the principals of Australian software firms will need to change the structure of their organizations and thirdly, change will be radical and revolutionary in nature and may be difficult to achieve. This thesis contributes to the organizational studies literature by extending existing work to include an analysis of issues use of institutional theory addresses a gap in the present understanding of the manner in which the principals of Australian software firms approach the establishment of structures required of sustainable growing businesses. A future research agenda is presented building upon the findings of this study. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Abstract not available

Abstract not available

The globalisation of the world economy and world markets has had far reaching effects on national economies as governments try to allocate funding to potentially profitable market areas. Rapid technological change has accompanied the expansion and diversification of the higher education market in an environment of global competitiveness, as universities try to claim their market share. Universities now view themselves as businesses, with strong implications for university staff, who are subject to new forms of organisational controls which emphasise the importance of corporate goals. / Thesis (PhD)--University of South Australia, 2000

This research is an investigation into how organisations can engineer new collaborative business processes. This engineering of processes is based on technical advances, which enables organisations to enhance their communication and collaboration with their customer and each other. This research identifies how advanced technologies can be properly applied to create collaborative business processes of within and across organisations. This research has enabled this collaboration and extended its boundaries to facilitate dynamic collaborations amongst multiple organisations that may not necessarily be known to each other. The new model of collaboration achieves the recommended collaborative environment by restructuring the business processes for Web-based applications. This thesis also validates the proposed model for the collaboration in a global environment. This creation and validation of the model satisfies the requirements of a PhD-level research. The concept of Collaborative Business Process Engineering (CBPE) is unique in that it describes how cluster-based processes of multiple organisations can be engineered. Furthermore, this research also integrates the existing concepts of Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) and Business Process Management (BPM) in the model. CPBE is able to evaluate the impact of the interoperability of the organisations on their engineered business processes as well as their business structures. This research further demonstrates the implementation of CBPE in a proposed Collaborative Web-Based System (CWBS). This thesis discusses how the Web Services (WS) and mobile technologies, specifically Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI), influence the interoperation amongst multiple organisations. The impact of the WS on engineered business processes and the extension of this impact on multiple organisations and their clusters are included in this research. This thesis also describes the existing model of collaboration and provides a literature review to support the need for the proposed model of collaboration. Existing technologies for the engineering of the new collaborative business processes are explained. Detailed descriptions of the research methodologies (quantitative and qualitative), philosophies (interpretivist and constructivist) and theories (evolutionary and socio-technical) used are identified and described here. The dynamic aspects of collaboration in the proposed new model of collaboration, wherein organisations can enter and exit the collaboration at will are discussed. The thesis also discusses the factors influencing the collaboration, such as trust, security, confidence level and the availability of the channels for collaboration. The dynamic aspects of the proposed model are tested against the static aspects of the current model wherein the collaborating organisations need to set up prior contract before collaboration. A part of this study deals with evaluation of the significance of the CBPE for the organisations that adapt technologies such as Web Service and mobility. Finally, this thesis demonstrates an investigation in the impact of interoperability emanating from emerging technologies, specifically the Web Services technology, on organisations by providing a model as well as conceptual implementations. The proposed model of CBPE and the conceptual implementations facilitate the use of the emerging technologies for effective collaborations. These emerging technologies are presented and described in Chapter 2 while their impacts on the proposed model of CBPE are explained in Chapter 4. The proposed model in this thesis enables numerous businesses to collaborate electronically thereby producing dynamically collaborating groups/clusters. This thesis presents the modelling, understanding of collaborative business process that transcend the organisational boundaries, factors that influence collaborative business processes and the entry and exit criteria for these collaborative organisations. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Organisations have processes to manage their business activities, often referred to as business processes. In today’s competitive global economy, automation of processes with appropriate technology is advantageous. However, the paradox of processes automation is the continuous evolution and change that occurs in business processes. As the business processes evolve and change, the underpinning automated systems need to reflect those changes. Even after a decade of research in the areas of business process automation (BPA) and business process evolution management (BPEM), organisations still find it challenging to manage evolution of automated processes. Therefore, this thesis finds answers to the question of “How can business process evolutions be accurately and effectively reflected in already implemented web-based workflow systems?” In order to provide a holistic solution to the above research question, this research introduces a framework named paradigm of process automation – PoPA framework and discusses its role in managing process evolution. This framework embodies a business process at four levels as pragmatic, semantic, syntactic, and implementation. Each of these levels deals with a distinctive representation of a business process. For example, the pragmatic level represents the contextual artefact elements such as Acts, policies, organisational structures, rules, and guidelines; that define a process, and the syntactic level denotes the models created for the purposes of automation. When a change takes place in any one of the levels of the PoPA framework, it creates a propagating impact on elements in the above-mentioned four levels. This propagation of impact takes place due to constraints, associations, dependencies (CAD) among elements within and across the levels (intra and inter-level CAD). When analysing intra and inter-level CAD most correlations are found to be hierarchical; therefore, a relational database structure is appropriate to capture these hierarchical associations. However, operational processes at the semantic level have complex associations, which are not hierarchical. Therefore, this research proposes to use Kleene Algebra with Test (KAT) for representing CAD at the semantic level. Propagating impact does not exclusively depend on inter and intra-level CAD, but is also closely associated with the nature of evolution. Depending on the nature of evolution, the propagating impact can be categorised as direct, indirect, secondary, and non-cautionary (DISN) impact. These DISN impacts suggest the severity of the propagating impact. The core contribution of this research is the Process Evolution and Change Impact Analysis (PECIA) Model, which enables the management of process evolution accurately and effectively in automated systems. In this research, a process automation project named Online Courses Approval System (OCAS) is used as an exploratory case study. The practical utility of the PECIA Model is validated using evolution scenarios of OCAS and epistemic utility is analysed based on a study of the literature. Amidst a plethora of literature on BPA and BPEM, this research is significant due to the following theoretical contributions that facilitate in managing automated processes in tandem with organisational process evolution: ���� PECIA Model holistically captures inter and intra-level CAD of process elements facilitating the propagating impact analysis within and across the four levels of the PoPA framework. • A novel use of KAT to capture CAD among process elements cohesively and completely into linear expressions, in order to analyse the impact propagation. • An algorithm that analyses KAT expressions of a process, to locate DISN impacts so that evolutions can be carried out accurately and effectively. The future works that arise from this work are manifold. These may include improving the use of the PECIA Model as a corporate process knowledge repository, and exploring possible other uses of the PECIA Model and KAT based process expressions. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The focus of this study is to consider the concept of ?improvisation? as a business process used by small businesses when faced with unanticipated events. Although the business news and literature is dominated by the activities of big businesses, there is little disagreement among researchers and business commentators about the role that small businesses plays in contributing to the economic activity of Australia. The contribution that small businesses make to the economy includes job creation, competitive power, economic growth and innovation. Furthermore, there is evidence that a flourishing small business sector can assist with creating and maintaining political and social stability. It is widely acknowledged that businesses are operating in a turbulent, unstable and at times chaotic commercial environment. Many business operators are spending increasing amounts of their time responding to unanticipated events in circumstances where there is little or no time to plan solutions or build up resources. There has been little research into how small businesses respond to such unanticipated events. A review of previous literature showed that business operators were likely to respond to unanticipated events in one of three ways; they either ignored the event, undertook planning or they improvised. The term 'improvisation' in this context was used to reflect either the time convergence between the realisation of a solution and its implementation or the application of selected resources for purposes other than that for which they were intended. A model of the process of improvisation was developed using the elements previously described in previous studies. The model falls into three parts; pre-improvisation, improvisation and post-improvisation. The methodology used was a qualitative process consisting of a semi-structured interviews with twenty-nine owners of small-business start-up firms, to explore their experiences with dealing with unanticipated events and to try to establish the nature of the improvisational process. It was important for the participants to tell their stories of improvisation and for the researcher to reflect their experiences in relation to the model of improvisation. The data collected provided greater insight into the process of improvisation and a refined model evolved which better represents the experience of participants. The study confirmed that small businesses do at times, use improvisation to respond to unanticipated events. Consequently, this study has made a significant contribution to the field by extending on the work undertaken to date and by the development of a model that more comprehensively represents the process of an improvisational response to an unanticipated event, in the context of small business.

The central concern of this study is to identify the role of power and politics in systems implementation. The current literature on systems implementation is typically divided into two areas, process modelling and factor based studies. Process modelling classifies the implementation into a linear process, whereas factor based studies have argued that in order to ‘successfully’ implement a system, particular critical factors are required. This literature misses the complexities involved in systems implementation through the human factors and political nature of systems implementation and is simplistic in its nature and essentially de-contextualises the implementation process. Literature has investigated some aspects of human factors in systems implementation. However, it is believed that these studies have taken a simplistic view of power and politics. It is argued in this thesis that human factors in systems implementation are constantly changing and essentially operating in a dynamic relationship affecting the implementation process. The concept of power relations, as proposed by Foucault (1976, 1977, 1978, 1980, 1982), have been utilised in order to identify the dynamic nature of power and politics. Foucault (1978) argued that power is a dynamic set of relationships constantly changing from one point in time to the next. It is this recognition that is lacking from information systems. Furthermore, these power relations are created through the use of discourse. Discourse represents meaning and social relationships, forming both subjectivity and power relations. Discourses are also the practices of talk, text and argument that continuously form that which actors speak. A post-structuralist view of power as both an obvious and hidden concept has provided the researcher a lens through which the selection and implementation of an enterprise-wide learning management system can be observed. The framework aimed to identify the obvious process of system selection implementation, and then deconstruct that process to expose the hegemonic nature of policy, the reproduction of organisational culture, the emancipation within discourse, and the nature of resistance and power relations. A critical case study of the selection and implementation of an enterprise-wide learning management system at the University of Australia was presented providing an in-depth investigation of the implementation of an enterprise-wide learning management system, spanning five years. This critical case study was analysed using social dramas to distinguish between the front stage issues of power and the hidden discourses underpinning the front stage dramas. The enterprise-wide learning management system implemented in the University of Australia in 2003 is a system which enables academic staff to manage learners, the students, by keeping track of their progress and performance across all types of training activities. Through telling the story of the selection and implementation of an enterprise-wide learning management system at the University of Australia discourses emerged. The key findings from this study have indicated that the system selection and implementation works at two levels. The low level is the selection and implementation process, which operates for the period of the project. The high level is the arena of power and politics, which runs simultaneously to the selection and implementation process. Challenges for power are acted out in the front stage, or public forums between various actors. The social dramas, as they have been described here, are superfluous to the discourse underpinning the front stage. It is the discourse that remains the same throughout the system selection and implementation process, but it is through various social dramas that reflect those discourses. Furthermore, the enactment of policy legitimises power and establishes the discourse, limiting resistance. Additionally, this research has identified the role of the ‘State’ and its influence at the organisational level, which had been previously suggested in education literature (Ball, 1990).

This thesis analyses the impact of a headmaster upon a non-government school during the first years of his leadership. Theories of organizational change and leadership behaviour provide the theoretical framework for this investigation. The changes that were sought at Marist College, Pearce, have their origin in 1983 with the appointment of the fourth headmaster of that College. Prior to this time Marist College had developed a reputation for conservatism and strong leadership. The College had grown since its foundation into a comparatively large institution, both in terms of physical size, personnel and student enrolment. The new headmaster saw the need to review the goals of the College with the aim to better the pastoral care of the large student body. The result of this evaluation was the identification of a series of changes that would open the College to new approaches involving structural changes, devolution of authority and personalization of the College. The study identifies and documents the ideals hoped to be achieved by the headmaster. What were seen as ideals were not in ail cases practical. The difficulties and problems faced by him in the implementation of these changes are also examined. Headmasters' terms of office are limited resulting in new headmasters being appointed regularly. Each brings to that office his own style and ideals. The difficulties faced in the types of change analysed in this study may be common to organizations experiencing a change in leadership style.