Business Process Re-engineering Strategies for United Arab Emirates’ Public Organizations

Abstract

Organizations in general, and public in specific, are striving to achieve excellence in their performance and gain a competitive edge through process improvement. However, the need for process restructuring is inevitable to overcome contemporary challenges faced within and outside an organization. To date, organizations have been able to achieve significant results with Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) implementation. However, and despite the reported success, many BPR projects in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) public sector do not achieve their improvement objectives. BPR projects are initiated within UAE’s public organizations to reshape their processes and streamline their business structure with the country’s government initiatives. Therefore, it is crucial to establish an understanding on the influential factors that result in BPR projects’ success and failure. The objective of this research study is to explore BPR strategies implemented in the UAE public organizations and investigate the contributing factors of success. Qualitative research through Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) is conducted to explore the relationship between factors and success criteria. The initial model is built on an extensive literature review and interviews with subject matter experts. Results suggest that the success rate of BPR projects in UAE’s public organizations range is 40-75%. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Model (PLS-SEM) highlight the importance of process owner’s role of motivating and leading performers to define and implement the future state of the process. Results also highlight the importance of data collection in identifying the appropriate process candidates with appropriate metrics to be re-engineered. Moreover, findings indicate that organizations with a smaller size of employees have higher impact on the success rate of BPR projects. Finally, based on the results, a set of recommendations to maximize the benefits of BPR projects is provided.