automation - Correct Answer-The use of technology to ease human labor or to extend the mental or physical capabilities of humans.
rationalization of procedures - Correct Answer-The streamlining of standard operating procedures, eliminating obvious bottlenecks, so that automation makes operating procedures more efficient
Describe each of the four kinds of organizational change that can be promoted with information technology. - Correct Answer-Automation: low risk, low reward. Employees perform tasks more efficiently and effectively.
Rationalization: medium risk, medium reward. Involves streamlining standard operating procedures, redesigning business processes, work flows, and user interfaces.
Business process redesign: higher risk, higher reward. Organizations rethink and streamline business processes to improve speed, service, and quality. BPR reorganizes
work flows, combining steps to cut waste and eliminate repetitive, paper-intensive tasks.
May eliminate jobs also.
Paradigm shift: highest risk, highest reward. Transforms how an organization carries out
its business or even the nature of the business. (Learning Objective 13-1: How does building new systems produce organizational change? AACSB: Application of knowledge.)
Business process management: - Correct Answer-Companies manage incremental process changes that are required simultaneously in many areas. Organizations need to
revise and optimize numerous internal business processes and BPM provides the methodologies and tools necessary to be successful. BPM is more about continual improvements to business processes and using processes as building blocks in information systems.
Steps required for effective BPM - Correct Answer-Identify processes for change: A business first needs to understand what business processes need improvement. Improving the wrong processes simply allows a business to continue doing what it shouldn't do in the first place.
Analyze existing processes: An organization must understand and measure the performance of existing processes as a baseline including inputs, outputs, resources, and the sequence of activities. The process design team identifies redundant steps, paper-intensive tasks, bottlenecks, and other inefficiencies. Otherwise, the effectiveness
of the changes can't be determined.
Design the new process: The process design team tries to improve the process by designing a new one that can be documented and modeled for comparison with the old