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12.01.2008

Reengineering , High-Performance Organizations

Reengineering

Reengineering involves the complete redesign of a firm’s structures and processes. It is done in the hope of increasing a firm’s operational efficiency and effectiveness by controlling costs, improving quality, improving customer service, and increasing the speed at which business is conducted. Once a firm has examined itself in light of the five factors of organizational structure, it can better understand where it can make changes to align its structure with the firm’s goals and objectives.

High-Performance Organizations

The goal of the high-performance organization is to effectively and efficiently utilize intellectual capital. High-performance organizations focus on employee involvement, teamwork, organizational learning, total quality management (TQM), and integrated production techniques. Employee involvement is accomplished through worker empowerment or participative management. Teamwork is accomplished though self-directed groups. Organizational learning involves gathering, communicating, and storing organizational information in order to anticipate changes and challenges and make more informed decisions about the future. TQM focuses on high quality, continuous improvement, and customer satisfaction. Integrated production techniques implement flexibility in manufacturing and services and involve job design and information systems to more effectively and efficiently utilize the resources, knowledge, and techniques that a business uses to create goods or services. It stresses the use of just-in-time production and service systems and relies heavily on computers to assist, control, and integrate different organizational functions. Implementing integrated production techniques requires speeding up communication and decision making within the organizational structure.

The process of transforming an organization into a high-performance organization begins by actively seeking to understand an organization’s work site problems and opportunities and its purpose, mission, strategy, and vision. These elements must be tied together into a new mission statement and vision for the firm that is aligned with the organization’s core values. In order to be successful, this process requires the active involvement of individuals from various levels and groups within the organization. The broad level of participation will also ensure a greater level of acceptance in the organization. Once these initial steps have been taken, the factors of employee involvement, teamwork, organizational learning, total quality management, and integrated production techniques can result in organizational, individual, and community benefits. The organization will be more effective in achieving its goals, job satisfaction and employee motivation will increase, and the organization will be better able to contribute to the community as a whole.

Although there are numerous benefits associated with high-performance organizations, establishing and maintaining them is a difficult task. One of the most daunting elements is successfully integrating employee involvement, teamwork, organizational learning, total quality management, and integrated production techniques. These are not separate functions; teamwork must contain elements of employee involvement, organizational learning, and total quality management. This can be especially challenging for managers who, in addition to their regular functions, are asked to implement these changes. Managers can experience many kinds of resistance. Employees may feel that the changes could put them out of a job. They may be resistant to participating in group decision making or in team-based activities. Managers may also experience obstacles related to cultural differences regarding hierarchy and participation. In light of these challenges, some firms succeed in implementing only some of the elements associated with high-performance organizations.

Successfully creating a high-performance organization requires a high degree of cooperation and a strong level of commitment and acceptance from all employees. It is a challenging and difficult process, but it offers significant rewards throughout the organization.

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