The relationship between organizational culture and perceived business process reengineering outcomes: An empirical study

The 1990's saw organizations facing increased competitive pressures due to many factors including globalization. U.S. firms realized the need for drastic improvements in process efficiency and effectiveness in order to create and maintain competitive advantage. Business process reengineering, the drastic change management technique enabled with advancements in information technology, seemed to be the answer to all of the firms' problems. Implementation of business process reengineering seemed to be difficult or impossible for some organizations. The results of BPR efforts over the past 20 years have been mixed. The focus of this research was to investigate the reasons for the failure of BPR efforts. An exploration within the property and casualty insurance industry was undertaken using the Denison Organizational Culture Survey. The sample for this survey-based study consisted of a selection of member companies of The Property Loss Research Bureau, an organization that consists solely of property and casualty insurance carriers. A correlation study explored the relationship between the dimensions of organizational culture and perceived BPR intervention outcomes. This study shed some light on the issue of organizations' corporate culture characteristics and organizational BPR outcomes, and determined that characteristics such as decentralized structures, forward thinking management, customer and employee empowerment, values congruency and a learning-centric culture, are more conducive to BPR implementation success than firms with more traditional organizational characteristics. The results of this study are expected to be of value specifically to property and casualty insurance carriers, as well as other firms, in the service sector, as they plan and execute organizational interventions to create and sustain competitive advantage. Of particular interest will be the knowledge quantifying the dimensions of organizational cultural to be addressed prior to the implementation of large-scale change efforts such as BPR. Dissemination of the results of this study will be to property and casualty insurance carriers via various methods including articles and industry conference presentations.