BUSINESS OPERATIONS IMPROVEMENT PLAN

Business Operations Improvement Plan

Abstract

The paper points out why and how it is necessary to include business processes into organizational improvement as a first step in the process of organizational improvement management. First, the necessity of including business processes into improvement models which are used during the performing of organizational changes is proved in the paper. Next, the business processes' components and characteristics which need to be included into organizational diagnosis are defined, and the way in which they are analyzed and evaluated in the process is explained. Finally, the method of development of the action plan for business processes improvement is also presented

Business Operations Improvement Plan

Introduction

Organizational improvement is a very important issue in the field of Organizational Development and Change. It is often the case in studies that organizational change management comes down to answering three questions: why (the causes of change), how (the process of change) and what (the content of change) (Pettigrew, 1987). Organizational improvement should provide the answer to the first and third questions, and answer the following: Why should the organization is changed? What should the content of change include, i.e. what should be changed in the organization? Therefore, the improvement is given great importance in published writings in the sphere of organizational change.

Organizational improvement is a method used for analyzing the organization in order to identify organizational shortcomings so they would be neutralized through organizational change. In itself, organizational improvement is a concept related to the concept of organizational analysis, and it is necessary to make a distinction between them at the very beginning. Organizational analysis is in many ways similar to organizational diagnosis, but there are some important differences. The main resemblance between organizational analysis and organizational improvement lies in the fact that both methods are focused on understanding the organizational content, i.e. on identifying the elements of organization and their nature, as well as the relations between them. Both methods start with certain organizational models and use very similar, or exactly the same, techniques for data collection and processing. The key difference between organizational analysis and organizational improvement is their aim: the aim of organizational analysis understands the organization for the purpose of its exploration, while the aim of organizational improvement understands the organization for the purpose of changing and improving it (action). It could be said that organizational improvement is a specific form of organizational analysis - a form focused on the performing of organizational change for the purpose of improving organizational performance.

Discussion

A great number of authors in the field of Organizational Change and Development have given their diagnostic organizational model. This applies, in particular, to the authors that not only deal with theory, but also with practice - the consultants in the field of Change Management. It all began with Leavitt, who claimed that most attempts of organizational change fail because of their limited scope. He was against the practice of partial conducting of changes - both in technology and in human relations processes, as it was ...