Business Process Change and Organizational Performance: Exploring an Antecedent Model

Abstract

Many organizations have undertaken major business process change (BPC) initiatives over the past ten years. Earlier thinking on this topic indicated a significant role for information technology in these initiatives, while more recently the importance of change management has been emphasized. This paper examines a model that proposes various antecedents to successfiil BPC. Three case studies with varying degrees of BPC project success are described in the context of this model, with the specific goal of determining facilitators and inhibitors to the success of these change efforts. The results indicate that the successfiil project tended to have facilitators in all dimensions of the framework, including the change environment, process management, and change management. The least successfiil project exhibited inhibitors primarily in the area of cultural readiness and change management.