RESISTANCE TO CHANGE RELATED TO BPR IMPLEMENTATION: A RESEARCH OF KUWAIT MUNICIPALITY

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ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I owe heartfelt thanks for a lot of people. First of all, I feel great gratitude to all my family who helped and supported me during this research. I extend my deepest thanks to Dr. …………, the supervisor of my thesis, for helping me with my work. He has paid my project the due care and attention and has patiently undertaken the correction work as well as the guidance role. I would like also to thank Kuwait Municipality, Engineering Office and their staff without whom this thesis would have been a distant reality.

ABSTRACT

Many organizations in Kuwait have undertaken business process reengineering initiatives with the aim of improving organizational performance. These initiatives inevitably involve redesign and alterations to the existing information systems that support the business processes. The implications for information systems and how organizations' existing systems can be evolved to support a reengineering project representing an area has been relatively under researched. It is known that information systems design and development are difficult in business process reengineering (BPR) environments therefore there is a firm resistance to any change. This research analyses why employees resist such change when implementing BPR. It is based on a questionnaire given to a sample of the employees at Kuwait Municipality and Engineering Office. They had to answer several questions concerning the resistance types towards changes when they happen as a result of BPR. Besides, the questions research their impact on the acceptance of the change process in the Kuwait Municipality when implementing the new system of building permits. In addition, some interviews are made with the same participants to come up with key characteristics of the relationship between the context related to BPR and the resistance types (behavioral, effective and cognitive). The questionnaire uses a structured technique to categorize participants into three groups: behavioral, effective and cognitive. Out of this analysis, many conclusions about the thesis subject can be drawn. Excel software was used to get the final results through splitting participants into groups with regard to their resistance types and for the same participants an interview was undertaken . All information gained about the types of resistance to change is linked to the context issue related to BPR. The results show that there is a relationship between the types of resistance to change and the context issue related to BPR. Thus, the recommendations are introduced to avoid and eliminate the resistance of employees and its consequent problems towards the implementation of business process reengineering. Besides, future research is mentioned to put forward enhancement or new ideas to the research assumption.

Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENT2

ABSTRACT3

LIST OF TABLES7

LIST OF FIGURES8

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS9

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION1

1.1 Introduction1

1.2 Relevance of This Thesis to the Country of Kuwait1

1.3 Problem Definition3

1.4 Research Objective4

1.5 Research Questions5

1.5.1 Major Question5

1.5.2 Minor Questions5

1.6 Research Methodology5

1.7 Data Analysis Method6

1.8 Thesis Structure6

1.9 Chapter Summary6

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW8

2.1 Introduction8

2.2 Background of the Micro Environment in Kuwait8

2.3 Business Process Re-Engineering8

2.3.1 Business Process Re-engineering ...