Competing in Information-Intensive Services: Analyzing the Impact of Task Consolidation and Employee Empowerment.

Author List: Seidmann, Abraham; Sundararajan, Arun;
Journal of Management Information Systems, 1997, Volume 14, Issue 2, Page 33-56.
We analyze the competitive and economic implications of information technology, the allocation of decision nights, and task bundling during business process reengineering. The popular reengineering literature advocates employee empowerment-decentralizing decision authority and consolidating tasks as complementary strategies. Our analysis reveals, however, that implementing these two changes simultaneously is suboptimal in many cases. Decentralization and consolidation decisions can occur separately or together; the optimal combination depends on the effectiveness of technology aimed at skill enhancement and the customers' sensitivity to time and quality. We identify those process parameters that can cause decentralization and consolidation to have opposite effects on process performance; we also point to other parameters, such as customer-to-customer variability, which can cause them to complement one another. Finally, we explain why, in a time-based competitive marketplace, firms are more likely to centralize their decision-making process while concentrating their information technology investments on enhancing productivity and intraorganizational communications.
Keywords: business process redesign;case manager;decentralization;economics of information systems;mass customization;queuing;strategic and competitve information systerms;triage
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#246 0.194 strategic benefits economic benefit potential systems technology long-term applications competitive company suggest additional companies industry operating costs difficult substantial total
#48 0.121 dimensions electronic multidimensional game transactions relative contrast channels theory sustained model predict dimension mixture evolutionary results unique traditional likely finite
#8 0.120 decision making decisions decision-making makers use quality improve performance managers process better results time managerial task significantly help indicate maker
#148 0.120 productivity information technology data production investment output investments impact returns using labor value research results evidence spillovers industries analysis gains
#112 0.119 services service network effects optimal online pricing strategies model provider provide externalities providing base providers fee complementary demand offer derive
#69 0.090 process business reengineering processes bpr redesign paper research suggests provide past improvements manage enable organizations regarding focal cycle creating issues
#277 0.053 structure organization structures organizational centralized decentralized study organizations forms decentralization processing communication sharing cbis activities appropriate provide identify organizing communications