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Subject: JAIS vol. 2, article 7 Date: Sun, 10 Feb 2002 15:09:35 +0300 From: Phillip Ein-Dor eindor@POST.TAU.AC.IL To: ISWORLD@LISTSERV.HEANET.IE

JAIS Volume 2, Article 7

Using a Positivist Case Research Methodology to Test Three Competing Theories-in-Use of Business Process Redesign

This months paper is by Suprateek Sarker of the College of Business and Economics at Washington State University and Allen S. Lee of the School of Business at Virginia Commonwealth University

The paper is particularly interesting in that it employs a case study to test a major practitioner theory-in-use of business process redesign derived from the business process reengineering (BPR) literature. Case studies are generally thought of as a basis for developing new theory rather than as a tool for testing theories.

Here, the theory tested posits a determining role for information technology in achieving effective business process redesign. The test was a positivist case study of a US company that undertook BPR. The evidence refutes the practitioner theory-in-use.

For critical researchers and skeptical practitioners, the overarching lesson of the case study is that business process redesign is but the latest arena in which researchers and practitioners are re-learning old lessons by repeating the past mistake of adopting a technocentric approach to designing and managing organizations. The future direction the authors suggest for researchers and practitioners interested in areas such as BPR, ERP, and E-Commerce implementation, all of which involve business process redesign, is to adopt, from the beginning, an orientation that is not technology-driven, but gives equal consideration to the technical and social dimensions, and the interactions between the social and the technological.

Phillip Ein-Dor Editor, Journal of AIS mailto: jais@post.tau.ac.il _____________________________________________________________

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