HR Issues and Challenges in Implementing Business Process Reengineering in Government Organizations in India

Abstract

Business Process Reengineering (BPR) in an Organization is redesigning of its business processes to radically change the system for service improvement, quality enhancement, cost reduction and cycle time reduction. It is not a onetime exercise, but is a continuous one. The requirement and feasibility of a business process reengineering, at present, exists for two reasons – one, the expectations of the stakeholders are rising day by day and secondly the changing technological environment permits the process improvements due to new inventions. Due to these changes, BPR is increasingly being seen as the answer to the challenges that the organizations, especially in service sector, face in delivering services more effectively and efficiently. A large number of government organizations in India have responded to these calls and have initiated BPR interventions not only to improve internal business operations but also to strengthen accountability in public service sphere. However, despite the best intentions of the organizations to improve their functioning, it is noted that many of these BPR initiatives have failed totally or partially to achieve their objectives. An analysis, at broad level, indicates that most of these BPR initiatives have been perceived as technology initiatives only. The importance of corresponding changes in Human Resource (HR) Management has not been gauged properly and consequently these initiatives have failed to take off. This calls for a need to examine the HR issues related to the BPR with focus on making these initiatives success. This theoretical paper, based only on secondary data source, is an attempt to identify the HR issues related to the implementation of BPR mainly in the service oriented government organizations with an objective to provide an input for effective implementation of various BPR initiatives.

Keywords: Business Process Reengineering, Change Management, e-governance, Human Resource, India