The administrative, financial re-engineering of the institutions

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Our director made it clear that cutting positions was not a goal of our reengineering process. However, achieving a more efficient workflow allowed us to relocate 2. We continue to rethink our workflow as resources and needs shift. Teams of staff are "owning" their expertise and the management style is more collegial.

We are a healthier group and fully expect that our work and responsibilities will continue to change. When Mount Holyoke decided to merge and reengineer Library and Computing Services, there were a number of factors both internally and externally that made it an ideal time to do so.

The campus factors were a change in the college presidency, a moderately new College Librarian with a strong technology background, a strong working partnership between the College Librarian and the Director of Computing and some campus service issues. The external factor was the rapid pace of technological change and how it was impacting the academic world. As a service organization on a college campus we were not given this option. The Provost, in consultation with the Director of Computing and Information Systems and the College Librarian, decided to merge four groups: The mandate was to merge the units while maintaining their primary roles of support for the academic program of the College.

We were given six months to consult broadly both internally and externally and to devise an organizational structure which seemed workable. An additional difficulty we had to address was that some groups on campus were not happy with the method used to make the merger decision. It was felt the decision to merge the units should have been made only after consulting with the larger college community. The concerns expressed mostly by the faculty were strong opinions on the process and what they envisioned as the outcome.

During the six months transition period an enormous amount of energy was put into communicating with the campus. Regular updates were made to the Provost, to both faculty advisory committees one for Library and one for Computing , and to the monthly faculty meeting. Even choosing the name of the new organization was a political decision.

There were many opinions on what its name should be. There were faculty members who felt library should to be prominent, others felt that service and information were essential and, lastly, high end users felt technology was crucial.

The naming of the organization was the one of the most difficult early decisions. Once the Provost announced the merger a Transition Team was formed. It was led jointly by the Director of CIS and the College Librarian and included representatives from each of the units affected 5 people as well as 3 faculty members and 2 students. It is at this point that the restructuring work began. Although we were told which units had to merge, the functions and staffing of those component units were not predetermined by the decision to merge.

The transition team appointed several task forces to work on particular issues and report back. The merger did not force any unnatural relationships. Personnel were placed based on skills and to some extent the interests of the staff member. At the time of the merger some functions or services could have fit in one of several units. The decision on where to place the function was made based on where it had previously been or in some situations it moved with a particular manager.

These decisions were revisited at a later time. Although the actual formation of the component units, the staffing of the units, and the choosing of a name were completed in six months, the implementation stage of the reengineering has become a life style. The academic year made it impossible for some processes to be implemented quickly. The academic budget cycle caused the implementation of a combined budget to be delayed until the following academic year.

Yet another result of an academic year cycle was that the creation of a new faculty advisory group was delayed for 10 months. The faculty advisory groups for the Library and Computing met jointly during that time and a new advisory committee for the LITS was elected by the faculty the following academic year. During the first year we discovered that some functions did not fit well in their units.

They were then shifted with the staff to another unit. At this point in reengineering the initiative to shift functions came from the staff involved. In one example two managers approached the Director to discuss the functions that did not fit in one unit but seemed more natural in the other. A second unit experiencing a number of vacancies used the opportunity to reconfigure the positions in the unit and to share responsibilities across the broader group with more cross-training.

The most-time consuming aspect of the restructuring was the merger of the library and information technology cultures.

2. Research Design

Within a month after the merger was announced by the Provost, the merging units closed for a one day staff retreat. This retreat focused on commonalties among the merging units, similarities in services and what made these units a good fit. The staff retreat is now an annual event. Topics covered in subsequent years include a review of the organization, work plans, and mission statements; working together, and understanding diversity. During the first six months of transition all-hands meetings were held each week, updates were given on progress and questions were answered.

After the merger date the meetings became monthly and had a different content. As part of the cultural merge each of the units in the new organization Library, Information and Technology Services did a presentation to the staff on their unit highlighting who they are and what functions they perform. As we move into the third year the meeting format has expanded to include other campus departments discussing what they do, how LITS can support them and discussions of particular issues that effect the organization such as preservation of electronic media and the year issues.

They meet every other week to discuss issues, to craft work plans, and to update the status of projects. The merging of cultures took time but the group has become a cohesive team that works well together. This group is a good example of embracing the differences in culture and using those differences to create a strong working team.

This new organization is open to change. The accreditation committee noted in their report that the LITS organization "has achieved a level of deployment and support for Information Technologies that is certainly at the top rank of peer colleges and, by many indicators, is competitive with universities more widely recognized as leaders in the area. Have we then reengineered reengineering? It became clear we would not be reengineering our core product, education, but pursuing administrative and marketing sub-products.

We were not experiencing fast, radical changes but gradual, open-ended ones. Funding and the academic schedule became key factors in the timing of implementations. The research phase of the reengineering projects stayed on schedule, but the projects then queued, waiting for appropriate budget cycles or grant funding.

Completing thorough research sometimes meant waiting for faculty or students to return before proceeding to subsequent steps. As we have moved forward through these untested modifications we have experienced very positive results. At Mount Holyoke we have the leadership structure to keep reengineering in the forefront of campus priorities. We have "Promoters" on the senior staff level to make budget and priority decisions.

They represent strengths in technology and finance, with a plan to add a Human Resources component as well. Our Senior Staff and Managers have participated in a conceptual version of reengineering training. This has helped them understand , support and recommend reengineering efforts. Administrators have done an excellent job in reassuring staff that they will not lose their jobs as a result of restructuring projects. Our college has had a practice of reviewing every vacant position for whether or not it should be replaced, but the college has not used layoffs as a means of budget reduction.

We have successfully used attrition and work reassignment. Because staff have confidence in this process, they have maintained a more open attitude toward change surrounding restructuring projects. In fact staff recently initiated the restructuring of the compilation and publication of the College Catalog. As we upgrade college business software we require that it be combined with reengineering the department or process.

In general we are making decisions away from any customization of purchased software. If we want additional functionality we are looking to providing them through web solutions.

Currently most of our redesign implementation solutions involve web development. Recognizing this direction we have outlined training programs for staff to increase their skills in web development. Grants have played an important role in providing additional staffing and resources to carry us through the implementation phases of reengineering. Two recent grants have provided us with a Web Master and a Web Trainer.

The Web Master has done substantial work on the college web site and in solving structural and process needs to provide the solutions recommended in restructuring projects. The Web Trainer successfully launched a three-year training project for faculty and staff, paired with students, to accomplish web projects that facilitate the efficient administration of their departments or courses. Even though grants sometimes have an additional twist to them to meet grant requirements, we still find they help keep us focused on the future and reaching our goals.

As with North Eastern University, a major project concerns the devolution of control of systems to departmental level. Central administration will then be able to take on a more strategic, customer focused role, monitoring trends and benchmarking administrative services against competitors: This current initiative is not being given the BPR label, partly to avoid association with a previous, failed attempt at re-engineering administration.

The new MIS will provide the tools that resource centres have been lacking to do an efficient management job. There has been considerable consultation with the main user groups to enable determination of system requirements. The Vice Chancellor has an active interest in the advancement of knowledge management, so there is a commitment from the top for strategic information systems development.

North Western University NWU has a more managerial ethos, with more hierarchical and centralised management structures than are present in longer established universities Thorley, Despite top rated teaching in some departments, this HEI is having to negotiate a precarious financial situation. Members of the Executive worked with some high level business consultants for a period of about three months on developing corporate strategy. Currently a number of strategies can be identified; a coherent corporate strategy is not in existence.

An integrated information system is an important component of change, as currently there are 17 officially recognised databases and many others are in existence, with all the related problems such as duplication being created as a result. The intention is to go back to basics and determine what actually needs to be done to complete a process, rather than simply seeking to improve current practices. For this reason, the interviews sought to examine the design of the projects, the challenges that project stakeholders are facing in the initial stages of project roll-out and anticipated problems.

The discussion that follows, begins by identifying how projects are initiated and the wide consultation that goes on at the outset of the BPR programmes. A range of factors are then identified that make implementing BPR in these institutions a difficult proposition.

The cases are reviewed under the headings of: Responsibility for the BPR programmes is then delegated to a lower tier of management. At Midland University, a project stake-holding team was appointed by the executive Steering Group for the project, consisting of a senior administrative manager from an academic department, a financial accounting manager from central administration, an information services manager representing the Library, an IT manager representing Computing Services and the Administrative Secretary. Similar teams were formed at the other case study institutions so as to represent the various functional areas within their HEI.

Senior management at Midland set the parameters for change as being a commitment to identifying means for more effective and efficient management of administrative support processes. At NWU the project parameters were broader to include possible redesign of teaching and learning processes. The purpose of establishing interdisciplinary teams to work on the projects is two-fold: Consultation within the institution is conducted at all levels of the organisation with clerical, managerial, academic, and technical staff, as well as with students.

This enables mapping of core processes and identification of the roles and functions involved. In an attempt to understand information handling within different functions an information audit is carried out. In the case of the Student Record Process at Highland University, the questions asked related to where information for fulfilment of a given task was obtained from, why it was required, when and how it was required.

Such an analysis helps determine the information requirements, which, in such a complex institution, are difficult to deduce. Individuals would not always understand why they performed a certain task: One of the aims of consulting widely was to create a sense of employee ownership of the change in the process. In the case of Yorkshire, the input of departments was seen as being in their interests, given the fact that they control their own budgets: This has proved crucial for precise determination of departmental requirements.

Employee involvement is essential in the HEI environment where change is generally achieved through consensus Brown, When a decentralised management structure exists, autonomous departments in the HEI have to be convinced of the value of a re-engineering programme:. Penrod and Dolence argue that processes must be more customer-orientated in Higher Education.

However, this would represent considerable change for University administration, and processes seem likely to remain service-provider orientated. At NEU the devolution of certain administrative functions to department level was intended to bring services closer to the student, but the project seems to have been little informed by student consultation. The needs of the service providers have been given most examination. In the design stages the HEI sample tended to have external input from management consultants. At NWU where the aim is to radically change processes, consultants worked with senior management on corporate strategy, pointing the executive towards successful BPR efforts undertaken in a number of United States HEIs.

By comparison, at Midland University there was a more practical form of support from the consultants: An informant at Highland, was of the opinion that the consultants they brought in did not have sufficient understanding of the organisational climate of his institution for providing valuable input:. Consultation and analysis, enables process review teams to formulate an agenda for change and project recommendations. However, although the project stakeholding team may be given license to make recommendations on the basis of its consultation and analysis of the existing situation, implementation of these proposals is another matter.

As an informant at Midland finds:. Senior management backing and support is required, but equally there has to be buy-in throughout the organisation. The HEIs in the sample conformed to the organisational structure identified by Taylor , where management structures are decentralised - albeit to varying degrees.

The conservative outlook of senior management at Midland, could be viewed as a reflection of the institution as a whole: The diagnostic processes carried out by each case study HEI, revealed that administrative support services draw on diverse sources of information, and that departments generally run their own independent databases in parallel to central databases.

As a result, university information systems are fragmented. Systems are started off in the centre for purposes such as accounting: Differences between departments dictate that departments will manage their own data, for their own purposes. While the systems may be established to reflect the interests of one group of users, problems arise because Universities have a range of user groups with differing information requirements.

A further significant problem is duplication, which is created by departments running their own systems along side central systems. As with Highland, where departments had been keeping exam results on departmental databases, printing these out and forwarding to central administration, who then had to re-type results into a central database.

Work is done more than once creating great inefficiencies.

Apart from the difficulty involved with determining diverse user information needs and meeting them all, the BPR initiative has to ensure that centralised systems are used. This is a question of providing different sections of the university with what they require. The change is related to culture in that it becomes necessary for departments to operate in a more uniform manner. However, attaining agreement on what a process should constitute is problematic. In the process evaluation at Midland University, financial process recommendations conflicted with those covered by student administration:.

Any agenda for change in the complex HEI will struggle to achieve a coherent and co-ordinated set of recommendations. An informant at NWU commented:. Some roles exist purely to check the work of others. Completion of administrative tasks was a complicated process, but various rubber stamping activities were found to be unnecessary obstacles to process completion. The current processes and roles appear to be inextricably linked with the cultural paradigm: Dobson and McNay posit that many interest groups exist in HEIs; this is borne out by analysis of the case studies. The cultural paradigm is further complicated by the fact that individual departments often have their own cultures and operate on an autonomous basis.

Slee considers that a TQM initiative in his department, succeeded because the philosophy underpinning the approach was in tune with the existing staff value system. It has to be noted that this was implemented within a single department; achieving alignment with the core beliefs and values of departments institution-wide is less feasible given the variation in cultures between departments.

It is not simply a question of negotiating one organisational culture when implementing change: This was most apparent in the long-established Highland University, but also evident in the newer NWU. In a large HEI such as Yorkshire, there is inevitably going to be a significant level of autonomy at the departmental level:. At Midland, there is a binary system of reporting so that managers have control over a specific function e.

An informant from Midland doubts the logic of this: This informant argues that it would make more sense to have a Director of Research to co-ordinate all research administration activities. A BPR programme strives to achieve such streamlining of activities, but it would involve a major restructuring, something unlikely to receive the necessary backing given that it threatens the roles of those it needs to have support from. As Willmott would put it: The professional status of academics is an important feature of the organisational culture in the case study HEIs.

There is an emphasis on academic freedom, and this is as much a feature of the new university in the sample NWU as the others. The notion of academic freedom is ever present. An informant at NWU points to the analogy that managing academics is like trying to herd cats - it is a near impossible task as they all have minds of their own, and go off in different directions.

Thus, an attempt to re-engineer teaching and learning - planned in NWU - is likely to be undermined by the unclear accountabilities within teaching and learning. Powerful academic management has to be convinced of the benefits of change; any restructuring of the organisation is likely to be viewed as an encroachment. For instance, at NWU, managerial hierarchies are just not recognised in the same way as they might be in the private sector: Attempts to radically change teaching and learning through BPR - enhancing development of resource and computer based learning - is a threat to the individualistic, customised learning offered by individual academics.

Hall and White argue that a barrier to introducing more IT-based teaching is the fact that academics seek to individualise teaching. Successful re-engineering of teaching and learning requires a massive cultural change. Three of the case study HEIs NWU, Yorkshire, NEU seek a degree of teaching and learning process transformation, but attempts to change administrative processes are far better developed.

At NWU it is recognised that there is an essence to teaching and learning that should remain intact following any redesign: An informant at NEU put forward the viewpoint is that any changes in teaching and learning support will have to come from individual academics " its to do with the initiative of the individual lecturer I would have thought". Traditional teaching methods remain despite any technological innovation.

Attempts to radically redesign teaching in a broad sweeping change seem to be unrealistic; the academic culture of the institution favours gradual and non-coercive persuasion:. The difficulty is understanding exactly how the tutor contributes to the learning process: Willmott views organisational culture as a potential source of strength within organisations. Insularity and a reluctance to change is a barrier for BPR to counter. A financial accounting manager at Midland argues: In addition to the diverse and unclear accountabilities in the HEIs, a further problem is the inertia present within the case study material.

This inertia is a by-product of years of successful provision of higher education: At NEU, it was argued that the ground-work for the project of widening access to the central student database to departments , was in fact best achieved without departmental involvement: A respondent an NEU considers that this suspicion would have got in the way of any practical changes, if departments had been involved from the start. A informant at Midland comments:. Senior management failed to acknowledge the importance of the recommendations and the core BPR programme did not really materialise.

The Higher Education market may be becoming more competitive, but the implications of this are only partially felt by its members. Insularity and inertia breed an attachment to the existing organisation in a HEI such as Highland. Change is opposed, and territories and empires are defended. Such a culture supports incremental change:. Bureaucratic systems prevail rather than a more flexible management structure.

Re-engineering change in higher education

Unfortunately for those implementing BPR in these institutions, incremental change will have limited results if the view of Hall et al. The aforementioned factors impact on both the aims of the project, and the actual project features that emerge when implementation occurs. Both Midland and Highland aim for improvement of the provision of administrative processes. This is limited change motivated by a healthy level of success within the institutions, but with a desire to improve practices in administrative services. At the University of Yorkshire:. The intention at Yorkshire is largely to streamline systems such as the Student Record system, bringing in a single powerful sodtware tool with access for departments through a distributed network.

1. Introduction

A cultural change is a feature of any successful BPR initiative, but in these case study HEIs the changes in culture required for radical change go against the grain. In any organisation the wrench felt by an effort to re-engineer the organisation is great. Instead the project teams have been set up by senior management, who motivated by a realisation that administrative costs are too high, expect the teams to identify best management practices for administration. Re-engineering concepts are used - mapping of processes and analysis to identify process and information system requirements.

By no means radical aims, the emphasis here is on achieving best practice and co-ordinating activities:. Such moderate aims are partially linked to the fact that these universities are performing well: These moderate aims are also linked to the structure of the organisation, where achieving change across the institution is problematic, given the presence of autonomous departments and a decentralised management structure. Thus, pragmatic improvements are striven for: At Highland, the search for best practice has led to a focus on promoting information sharing within the University.

This involves a form of cultural change, demonstrating to people that the information they hold can be of use to others:. An informant at Highland was of the opinion that non-sharing of information is not particularly a power related issue, but represents a lack of realisation that others can benefit from the information that people hold. Midland had produced recommendations that would radically change administrative processes, but as the gains to be made seemed out of proportion to the upheaval that would result from implementation, the main BPR programme was rejected by senior management.

An informant at Midland argued that what has actually happened, is elements of the proposed BPR have been taken and applied to various projects, such as the restructuring of research administration:. At Midland and Highland, the limited scope of the projects means that BPR is only a component of what is going on in terms of change within the institutions. For instance, at Midland, improvement of the Student Record process is a stand-alone project.

Recommendations that had been flagged up as IT-related changes are broadly happening, but these are not co-ordinated by a single BPR strategy. For instance Midland is seeking to reduce in real terms the levels of support staff, using the capabilities of IT to operate under the reduced levels:.

This is clearly not a radical programme of BPR to transform the organisation. Head-count reduction programmes are going on in both Highland and Midland, but these are described as separate initiatives and not connected to BPR.

Reengineering Reengineering: Are Academic Institutions Reshaping Reengineering?

Instead the aim is to improve administrative effectiveness so that more effort can be concentrated on the core business of teaching, learning and research. The approach is not the revolutionary change created by business process re-engineering, but a more evolutionary tinkering with existing processes. At Highland the intention is to utilise existing information systems to best effect, encouraging a more information sharing environment.

NEU is also taking current information systems as its starting point; the change is in the widening of access to the student central database. In fact this is not indicative of a redesign of responsibilities for many members of departmental staff: It is very much about fitting in with the status quo. There is initial suspicion - as tends to exist between departments and the centre - and concern that the centre is off-loading central work to departments. For example, they have programmed in a mail-merge facility on the central student database which acts as a time-saver in departments:. Problems occur when changes in working practices are necessary.

The IT changes at Midland are expected to bring about associated efficiencies, but these are uncoordinated projects. The problem with a range of different projects is that technological changes will occur in a vacuum. Information systems changes are about changing the way people work: An informant recognises that Yorkshire has not really done enough to facilitate the fact that departmental administrators will need to acquire new skills:.

The lack of human resources change planning is partly attributed to the complexity of the situation. Each resource centre department within the University is different, so that some departments are devolving work to secretaries, whilst others are devolving to quite high level administrators. The problem will be that departments might fail to manage the change effectively: In the case study HEIs, the autonomy of departments and diverse cultures, largely results in a compromise between BPR theory and what can be achieved in the particular restrictions of the HE environment: BPR is off set by institutional complexity; that is the information requirements, academic politics and associated cultural barriers to implementing organisational change.

Achieving co-ordination of the disparate - but nonetheless interdependent - information sources is an immensely difficult task given the diversity of section concerns. NWU are rather more radical at the outset of their initiative, constructing a broad agenda for organisational change through BPR. Organisational cultural factors experienced in the other universities, such as academic freedom, and a decentralised management structure, are still significant factors for those implementing process review in this institution.

The fact that this HEI aims for change of a radical nature seems to be related to top management evaluation of the financial situation. This HEI is having to face up to significant financial problems: The financial situation at NWU has opened the door for a radical re-engineering programme: The agenda for change is all encompassing, outlining how all areas of the university could be transformed to advance organisational effectiveness. Determining precisely how change should be managed is another matter, although there is recognition of the limitations of an approach that involves tinkering with existing processes: There has been too much adding to what already exists and not removing redundant practices:.

Re-centralisation of systems is also seen as a necessary requirement, to achieve the necessary integration of information systems. For this to happen this informant was aware that a cultural change has to occur. Also, the information requirements of different sections are diverse, making integration a difficult proposition. Currently, bids to re-engineer administrative processes are the most developed, whilst plans to redesign learning and teaching are somewhat less clear. This is an indication of the difficulty associated with applying BPR to teaching and learning.

This represents a similar philosophy to that of Grint who considers BPR to be a utopia to work towards, even though it is unlikely to be arrived at.

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