Business Process Management

Back cover text: Megaprojects and Risk provides the first detailed examination of the phenomenon of megaprojects. It is a fascinating account of how the promoters of multi-billion dollar megaprojects systematically and self-servingly misinform parliaments, the public and the media in order to get projects approved and built. It shows, in unusual depth, how the formula for approval is an unhealthy cocktail of underestimated costs, overestimated revenues, undervalued environmental impacts and overvalued economic development effects. This results in projects that are extremely risky, but where the risk is concealed from MPs, taxpayers and investors. The authors not only explore the problems but also suggest practical solutions drawing on theory, experience and hard, scientific evidence from the several hundred projects in twenty nations and five continents that illustrate the book. Accessibly written, it will be the standard reference for students, scholars, planners, economists, auditors, politicians and interested citizens for many years to come.

In this paper we argue that the use of the communicative theory of Jürgen Habermas in planning theory is problematic because it hampers an understanding of how power shapes planning. We posit an alternative approach based on the power analytics of Michel Foucault which focuses on ‘what is actually done’, as opposed to Habermas’s focus on ‘what should be done’. We discuss how the Foucauldian stance problematises planning, asking difficult questions about the treatment of legitimacy, rationality, knowledge and spatiality. We conclude that Foucault offers a type of analytic planning theory which offers better prospects than does Habermas for those interested in understanding and bringing about democratic social change through planning.

Megaproject Planning and Management: Essential Readings contains the seminal articles from the growing body of research on megaproject planning and management along with an original introduction by the editor, Bent Flyvbjerg. The leading and most cited authority in the field, Flyvbjerg has used crowdsourcing and 25 years of experience to cherry-pick from several hundred articles and books the writings that define the field. This volume will be an indispensable source for those wishing to speak with authority about how megaprojects are prepared, delivered, and fought over. The target audience is students, academics, practitioners, and media pundits alike, as well as communities affected by megaprojects.

Using objective measures of investor protections in 170 countries, I establish that the level of investor protection matters for cross-country differences in GDP growth: countries with stronger protections tend to grow faster than those with poor investor protections.

At the same time that case studies are widely used and have produced canonical texts, it may be observed that the case study as a methodology is generally held in low regard, or is simply ignored, within the academy. For example, only 2 of the 30 top-ranked U.S. graduate programs in political science require a dedicated graduate course in case study or qualitative methods, and a full third of these programs do not even offer such a course. In contrast, all of the top 30 programs offer courses in quantitative methods and almost all of them require training in such methods, often several courses. In identifying this paradox of the case study’s wide use and low regard, Gerring rightly remarks that the case study survives in a “curious methodological limbo,” and that the reason is that the method is poorly understood. In what follows, we will try to resolve Gerring’s paradox and help case study research gain wider use and acceptance.

Actors in competitive environments are bound to decide and act under conditions of uncertainty because they rarely have accurate foreknowledge of how their opponents will respond and when they will respond. Just as a competitor makes a move to improve their standing on a given variable relative to a target competitor, she should expect the latter to counteract with an iterative lagged asymmetric response, that is, with a sequence of countermoves (iteration) that is very different in kind from its trigger (asymmetry) and that will be launched at some unknown point in the future (time lag). The paper explicates the broad relevance of the newly proposed concept of " iterative lagged asymmetric responses " to the social study of temporality and to fields as diverse as intelligence and counterintelligence studies, strategic management, futures studies, military theory, and long-range planning. By bringing out in the foreground and substantiating the observation that competitive environments place a strategic premium on surprise, the concept of iterative lagged asymmetric responses makes a contribution to the never-ending and many-pronged debate about the extent to which the future can be predicted.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0961463X17752652

This research was funded by, and implemented within, a UK national research organisation, while the author was the KE and Impact Evaluation Manager responsible for assessing impact on a £15m UK government-funded research programme.

This work was also submitted as the authors MBA dissertation which was accepted and awarded in 2009.

ABSTRACT: A methodology and methods ‘toolbox’ is proposed for conducting impact research and assessment from within research programmes. The emphasis is upon how to clarify and assess the wider impacts from the early stages onwards.

The approach explicitly acknowledges, and attempts to address, the known issues and challenges of impact assessment while drawing upon the resources and opportunities available to research managers and researchers within such programmes.

The study has two triangulating foundations. Firstly, it examines the academic literature to help identify and design the pilot methodology and methods. Secondly it trials these in a real programme to both test and improve them.

The study was conducted over one year within one leading UK research organisation, where two research programmes (and around 60 research projects of £15m total value) were being assessed for their impacts. The study draws upon actual impact management experience and reflection, prospective (ex ante) and retrospective (ex post) assessments, participatory contributions from leading researchers undergoing assessment, and consultation with external users. The findings of this study outline the pilot and its first iteration. Recommendations are made for improvement to the methodology and methods.

A subsequent follow-on bid to UK government incorporating the impacts identified from implementing this methodology, successfully led to a further £15m of government funding.

It is expected the pilot methodology and methods will be applicable to other organisations, conducting and funding such research programmes, required to research and assess the wider research impacts.

Although primary focus of implemetation trials was upon research in physical sciences, technology, high-tech engineering, computing/IT, and environment, the wider literature study, the methodology design and justification, the methods proposed and used, and the resulting general recommendations and lessons are expected to apply more broadly to many other research areas, where the impact is to be found more widely in the society, economy, government or public sector or within organizations, policies, professions or the public.

Interest in this work is expected from research programme managers, impact managers and assessors, management consultants advising in this area, and government funding managers, all seeking to embed a developing approach to understand, capture, and enhance wider impact.

Actualmente las organizaciones que buscan permanecer en el futuro, deben hacer planeación estratégica en virtud de los cambio es que ocurren y lo vertiginoso de los mismos, es así que todas las organizaciones, llámense empresas privadas o públicas, instituciones paraestatales, organizaciones de la sociedad civil, centros educativos o fundaciones eclesiásticas, así como los tres órdenes de gobierno requieren de planear su porvenir en el corto, mediano y largo plazo, así como de aprovechar su trayectoria histórica y su legado cultural.

ABSTRACT

My thesis paper discussed about “A critical analysis of Balanced Scorecard as a performance measurement tool: an overview of its usage and sustainability”. The Balance Scorecard is an assimilated strategic performance planning and management tool or system used for business organization, industry, non-profit organization, government worldwide. This system is used for business undertakings like vision establishment and strategic planning of organization to boosts internal and external communication and encourages transparency in business operations and monitors and measure performance of organization against its visions and goals. The term "scorecard" denotes enumerated performance measures and "balanced" signifies that the system is balanced between; short-term objectives and long-term objectives, financial events and non-financial events, lagging indicators and leading indicators, interior performance and exterior performance standpoints. This assessment deliberates the “Balance Scorecard”, an assimilated strategic performance management tool which was designed by Robert Kaplan and David Norton in their series of articles in ‘Harvard Business review’ in 1990. Recently, the Harvard Business Review hailed the Balanced Scorecard as one of the 75 most persuasive and prolific concepts of the twentieth century.
Balanced Scorecard (BSC) emerged to deliver solutions to the major disputes and to emphasize the assessment of a diversity of factors/dynamics within an organization to attain tremendous results. Balanced scorecard not only explains major issues of business but also helps the business management to build the linkage between the performance measurements for the better management and assists managers to transit from a reactive approach to a proactive approach to management. Generally, the Balance Scorecard can be defined as a prudently nominated set of quantifiable measures which elucidate an organization’s strategy and aligns all the resources and energies of organization (e.g. people, budget, initiatives etc.) to attain this strategy. Four generic perspectives were identified Kaplan and Norton that cover the core strategic focus areas of an organization. These four perspectives are financial perspective, customer perspective, internal process perspective and learning & growth perspective.
Most organizations have established systems for capturing, monitoring, and sharing performance data that demonstrate to be critically flawed, but they are incapable of capturing the value generated from the mechanisms of today’s modern business organizations. These mechanisms denote the intangible assets, such as staff’s knowledge and skills, customer & dealer relationships, and innovative environments and cultures. Consequently, the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) was developed to provide resolutions to the above foremost issues. And now, Balance Scorecard has become one of the best choices to evaluate how the organization is performing. The best thing of implementation of balanced scorecard is that it involves entire organization to make execution fruitful. The upper management has to connect goals to the down to all personnel to attain that. Appropriate planning can make effective application of BSC in any organization. Before the Balanced Scorecard, many organizations already used a collection of both financial and non-financial measures of acute performance pointers. But, a well-developed Balanced Scorecard is different from such systems as the four BSC perspectives build a chain of cause-and-effect relationships. Successfully, the cause-and-effect relationships demonstrate the hypothesis behind the organization's goals and strategy. The measures reflect a chain of performance drivers that regulate the efficiency of the strategy application. A well-designed balanced scorecard interpret an organization’s mission and remaining business strategy into a limited number of precise strategic objectives that could be interconnected and measured operationally. It is a concept that assesses an organization’s actions in terms of its vision and strategies, to provide managers with a comprehensive outlook of the performance of business. Organizations stand to advantage from the practice of the balanced scorecard system managing performance. It has been proved as one of the most prolific performance measuring tools. For this reason, various public, private, government, business and not-for-profit organizations have adopted the scorecard as part of their strategic management approach.
This report describes and illustrates basics of the balanced scorecard, that is, introduces the balanced scorecard approach, describes an extended enterprise balanced scorecard that can be used by individual organizations or in partnership with other organizations, crucially analyze every details and issued related to balanced scorecard, sustainability of balanced scorecard, evaluates positive and negative outcomes of implementing balanced scorecard and concludes with a discussion of basic components for effective scorecard implementation.

Although it is probably the best-known Prospective Hazard Analysis (PHA) tool, Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is far from the only option available. This paper introduces one of the alternatives: The Structured What-If Technique (SWIFT). SWIFT is a flexible, high-level risk identification technique that can be used on a standalone basis, or as part of a staged approach to make more efficient use of bottom-up methods like FMEA.

In this paper we describe the method, assess the evidence related to its use in healthcare using a systematic literature review, and suggest ways in which it could be better adapted for use in the healthcare industry. Based on the limited
evidence available, it appears that healthcare workers find it easy to learn, easy to use, and credible. Especially when used as part of a staged approach, SWIFT appears capable of playing a useful role as component of the PHA
armamentarium.

ABSTRACT
Through this study, an endeavour has been taken to emphasize on the need of the management information systems (MIS) in Jamuna Fertilizer Company Limited (JFCL), especially to identify the potential areas wherein the MIS could be effectively used. Management information system (MIS) or computer information system (CIS) consists of five related components: hardware, software, people, procedure, and collections of data. The term information technology (IT) represents the various types of hardware and software used in information systems, including computer and networking equipments. There is some lacking in business solving networking system like MIS/CIS/IT in the JFCL. Main barriers are a lack of leadership, motivation and shortage of skill manpower to implement MIS in JFCL.

KEYWORDS
MIS, JFCL, BCIC, Case Study

Back cover text: If the new fin de siècle marks a recurrence of the real, Bent Flyvbjerg’s Rationality and Power epitomizes that development and sets new standards for social and political inquiry. The Danish town of Aalborg is to Flyvbjerg what Florence was to Machiavelli: a laboratory for understanding the real workings of power, and for grasping what they mean to our more general concerns of social and political organization. Politics, administration, and planning are examined in ways that allow  a rare, in-depth understanding. The reader witnesses, firsthand, the classic and endless drama which defines what modernity and democracy are and can be.

Taken together, the works of Jurgen Habermas and Michel Foucault highlight an essential tension in modernity. This is the tension between the normative and the real, between what should be done and what is actually done. Understanding this tension is crucial to understanding modern democracy, what it is and what it could be. It has been argued that an effective way of making democracy stronger is to strengthen civil society. This article contains a comparative analysis of the central ideas of Habermas and Foucault as they pertain to the question of democracy and civil society. More specifically, the discourse ethics of Habermas is contrasted with the power analytics and ethics of Foucault evaluating their usefulness for those interested in understanding, and bringing about, democratic social change.

This article provides an analysis of the problematic of foresight in traditional Chinese thought, articulating it with current developments in the epistemology of futures studies, planning theory, and strategic management. It is argued that in Chinese thought the answer to the question " Can the future be predicted? " depends on the forecasting horizon: whereas the immediate future can be sensed and taken advantage of by immersing oneself in the evolving situation, the remote future is fundamentally unpredictable. These dual answers are entrenched in discussions of what constitutes wisdom, opening up productive spaces of encounter between the problematic of foresight and the problematic of wisdom. https://doi.org/10.6531/JFS.2018.22(3).00A35

This paper discusses the tourism reality analysis for hotels tourism using geographic information system(GIS) in Khartoum state. The motivation includes the lack information and research in these fields, there is no knowledge serve the tours and visitors or decision makers in hotel tourism. The objectives are to Collect and classify the hotel tourism, Product Maps for hotel tourism, and Statistical Analysis for hotel tourism. The importance's support the decision makers or tours. The methodologies include three phase: Analysis, Design and Implementation. The results include, first: Classify the hotel tourism, second: Product Maps : 5-Star Map, 4-Star Map, 3-Star Map, 2-Star Map and 1-Star Map, and third Statistical Analysis for hotel tourism. The recommendations Classify the hotel tourism and spatial analysis in Sudan, Developments the geographic distribution for hotel tourism in Sudan, and Distribute the hotel tourism in Sudan according the service tourism tours.
Keywords—Geoinformatics, DDS(Dicision Support System), Geostatistical Analysis, Base Maps.

The Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) is the de-facto standard for representing in a very expressive graphical way the processes occurring in virtually every kind of organization one can think of, from cuisine recipes to the Nobel Prize assignment process, incident management, e-mail voting systems, travel booking procedures, to name a few. In this work, we give an overview of BPMN and we present what are the links with other well-known machineries such as BPEL and XPDL. We give an assessment of how the OMG's BPMN standard is perceived and used by practitioners in everyday business process modeling chores.

The new business ideology has changed from businesses being profit oriented to being customer oriented, these changes has led to numerous formulation and implementation of strategies and tactics to improve customer relationship management and more so increase services so as to lead to an increase in their performance. Back then telecom industries during the 1990s could lose few customers today and gain tomorrow, and yet it was considered an improvement. Now due to technology and innovation, Customer relationship management is the order of the day not for telecommunication firms only but also almost all businesses.
This project evaluates the significance of customer relationship management and its impact on the performance or profitability of an organization; it identifies various strategies that can influence both customer satisfaction and organizational performance. Furthermore, the research work goes by emphasizing the implementation of technological facilities, as it enhances customer service delivery. Competition can also affect customer decision which will in turn have an effect on performance of organizations in terms of customer share and customer base. In other to improve this, efforts should be placed on giving qualitative and quantitative services.
The study recommended that telecommunication firms should ensure that their technological capability must be up to date, and ensure that information or data collected from customers must be kept confidential, secret and treated individually. The study suggests also that further research should be carried out by scholars on other variable that can influence the performance of an organization. Areas such as; Financial performance (e.g. shareholder return); Social responsibility, Employee stewardship, Profit maximization, Employee training, Corporate planning and strategy, Human  resources capacity enhancement. The project in a nutshell focuses on how customer relationship management if adopted will influence the performance and profit of the organization.

The Supplementary Green Book Guidance on Optimism Bias (HM Treasury 2003) with reference to the Review of Large Public Procurement in the UK (Mott MacDonald 2002) notes that there is a demonstrated, systematic, tendency for project appraisers to be overly optimistic and that to redress this tendency appraisers should make explicit, empirically based adjustments to the estimates of a project’s costs, benefits, and duration. HM Treasury recommends that these adjustments be based on data from past projects or similar projects elsewhere, and adjusted for the unique characteristics of the project in hand. In the absence of a more specific evidence base, HM Treasury has encouraged departments to collect data to inform future estimates of optimism, and in the meantime use the best available data. In response to this, the Department for Transport (henceforth DfT), has contracted Bent Flyvbjerg in association with COWI to undertake the consultancy assignment "Procedures for dealing with Optimism Bias in Transport Planning". The present Guidance Document is the result of this assignment.

The Business Model Canvas is a strategic management and lean start-up template can be used as aid for developing a new, or analyzing and mapping an existing business model of a company. It is a visual chart with elements describing a firm or product's value proposition, infrastructure, customers, and finances. It assists firms in aligning their activities by illustrating potential trade-offs. It gives a graphic representation of a number of variables that show the values of the organisation.

A business model is a description of how your business intends to operate and make money. Sounds simple, RIGHT?

This paper highlights two of the ways in which an abundance of frequent and high-quality information can nonetheless lead an economic agent to failure. I begin with the problem of frequent information, continue with the problem of abundant high-quality information, and end with a general reflection about the lesson these two problems may offer for economic geographical scholarship.

"Corruption has become one of the most popular topics in the social scientific disciplines. However, there is a lack of interdisciplinary communication about corruption. Models developed by different
academic disciplines are often isolated from each other. The purpose of this paper is to review several major approaches to corruption and draw them closer to each other. Most studies of corruption fall
into three major categories: (i) rational-actor models where corruption is viewed as resulting from cost/benefit analysis of individual actors; (ii) structural models that focus on external forces that determine corruption; and (iii) relational models that emphasize social interactions and networks among corrupt actors. Focusing on actors’ behavior and the social context, this article explains corruption concepts taken from sociology, economics, organization studies, political science, social anthropology, and social psychology."

Companies collaborate to seize opportunities as well as exchange documents and other types of resources. This is achieved by following business processes that are subject to evolution. Collaborative portals are web oriented solutions aimed at this need of collaboration. However, the development and maintenance of a collaborative portal is
non-trivial and remains hardly accessible for many  ompanies. As a consequence, the challenge is controlling the costs of maintenance and implementing new features. To circumvent these issues, it is possible to collect business requirements of the collaboration in a model and then generate automatically the corresponding collaborative portal. The model, in this case, must be accessible by the business actors and must express even the most complex aspects of the collaboration needs. This is the context of our work. Having not found a solution which corresponded to our requirements, we have developed a design approach of  ollaborative portals founded on the Model Driven Engineering. As for the description of our portals, we have  hosen to focus on the business modeling based on the business processes like starting point. Our solution relies on our meta-model MACoP (Modeling and Analysis of  ollaborative Portal). In this meta-model we have joined together accessibility and the expressivity, by proposing new concepts allowing the complete generation of collaborative  portals. The meta-model MACoP is accompanied by a  ransformations chain that makes it possible to pass directly from a MACoP model to the Python code of the collaborative portal.

Project management has been defined differently by various scholars. Kerzner (2006) sees project management as the process of planning, defining work requirements, and specifying the levels of quality of deliverables, as well as the resources needed, project monitoring, evaluating and making corrections where necessary. According to Kerzner (2006), there has been an increased use of project management over the years by organizations to achieve organizational goals. Qureshi, Warraich, and Hijazi (2009) advised that project management knowledge and practices can be modelled based on individual processes. An analysis of project management research in the allied disciplines reveals an explosion of popularity and a strong interest in project management research (Kwak & Anbari, 2009). This has been widely recognized in the area of design, planning, control, cost and quality of projects across the globe (Ika, 2012; Ika, Diallo & Thuillier, 2010; Moyo, 2009). The strategic management of every organization depends largely on projects and how they have been managed and each project is unique and requires a tailored project management approach (Shenhar & Dvir, 2007b). This necessarily implies that the same project management approach cannot be arbitrarily applied to all projects. The first research question (RQ1) is tied with the assertions above. Thus, the study sought to evaluate how MMDAs manage their projects while considering which project management practices they adopt. Do they have standard project management practices across various MMDAs or do they vary the project management practices based on the source of funding or aim of the project in question?

Purpose-Despite its popularity, business process management (BPM) is not unequivocally defined, but obtains different forms with varying specifications. This paper presents a critical overview of BPM, as it appears within four dominant management paradigms: total quality management, standardized management systems, business process reengineering and Six Sigma. The purpose of this paper is to explore BPM specifications and compare the BPM implementation potential under each paradigm. Design/methodology/approach-This is based on the analysis of a large number of highly cited scholarly publications. In order to identify the nature of BPM within each paradigm, a common framework for comparison is first established and then, for each paradigm, BPM is analyzed according to the main parameters of this framework. Findings-Many differences among various BPM forms are paradigm driven. So, the approach adopted by each paradigm (i.e. individual-process or systemic approach) affects the scope and role of BPM. The principles of each paradigm directly affect the attributes assigned to BPM. Despite of important differences, the structure of BPM within all paradigms conforms to the stages of the classical BPM lifecycle. However, each paradigm assigns different weights to each stage and also displays different levels of BPM implementability. Originality/value-The paper presents a first systematic comparison of BPM specifications for the dominant management paradigms primarily deployed. It thus explains why many attributes originating from the paradigms have crept into the general BPM specifications. This work can be considered as a step toward defining the core attributes of a paradigm-independent BPM model, thus enhancing its application scope as an invaluable management tool.

This paper aims to present an implementation of the DEA cross-efficiency models in the environment R. R is a free software and open source, highly extensible that offers a variety of functions and graphical routines for data analysis. We develop R codes for both formulations aggressive and benevolent of the DEA cross-efficiency models. In order to illustrate a practical application of the R codes we use inputs and outputs from Brazilian electricity distribution utilities.

The entire digital ecosystem is disrupted due to disruptive innovation.  Digital Transformation (DT) is the way of enabling business with innovative technology to either disrupt others in the ecosystem or protect digital firm itself from disruption.  Digital firms can either be failure or successful based on how they approach DT because DT is now at the heart of the business model of a digital firm.  In the 21st century, organizations incline to the implementation of DT which is an exceptional means of achieving business excellence (BE) to achieve outstanding quality.  Inspired from IoT’s “of the things” concept, DT based excellence framework, “EoT – Excellence of Things” can be developed that also utilizes frameworks, platforms, services and best practices related to BE for adding value in digital firms.  Thus, this study explores a theoretical model of DT based BE.  Also, the meaning of EoT for digital firms and the components of DT based BE is explored through an in-depth interview.  Delphi method has been applied as a tool for data collection from a panel of experts who are chosen from a different educational and professional background.  They are from several industries too.  The responses acquired from the open-ended questions are run by Nvivo application.  The analysis generated few ‘drivers’ that influence a digital firm to achieve EoT.

Moreover, based on EoT framework discussed in this thesis, there are three enablers such as Corporate of Things (CoT), Lean of Things (LoT) and Data of Things (DoT).  As per the participants’ responses, the significant aspects of EoT that have to be taken care off during implementation of EoT to add value to a digital firm are supportive Organizational Culture (38%), Process Driven (23%), Strong Leadership (14%), Employee Motivation (8%), Quality Management (6%) and Excepting Digital Transformation (6%). 

However, other factors such as Management Commitment (2%) and Transparency (3%) are also considered as aspects of EoT implementation.  Finally, the relationship of drivers, integration of three enablers is discussed elaborately.  The findings have implications in four principles of EoT framework.  Lastly, an EoT Reference Model (ERM) has been generated from the analysis.  Other implications have been discussed too.

This paper focuses on problems and their causes and cures in policy and planning for large infrastructure projects. First, it identifies as the main problem in major infrastructure development pervasive misinformation about the costs, benefits, and risks involved. A consequence of misinformation is massive cost overruns, benefit shortfalls, and waste. Second, the paper explores the causes of misinformation and finds that political-economic explanations best account for the available evidence: planners and promoters deliberately misrepresent costs, benefits, and risks in order to increase the likelihood that it is their projects, and not the competition's, that gain approval and funding. This results in the "survival of the unfittest," where often it is not the best projects that are built, but the most misrepresented ones. Finally, the paper presents measures for reforming policy and planning for large infrastructure projects, with a focus on better planning methods and changed governance structures, the latter being more important.