New Technology, Work and Employment 18:1
ISSN 0268-1072
What is value-adding?
Contradictions in the
practice of BPR in a Danish
Social Service
Administration
Peter Hagedorn-Rasmussen and
Peter Vogelius
This article explores the implementation of BPR in the Social
Service Administration in a Danish municipality. The technical rationality inherited in BPR marginalises broader conceptions of work-rationality represented by the social workers.
This results in a ‘clash’ between rationalities in the Family
Group, causing increased strain and lower job satisfaction.
Introduction
This article deals with the practice of Business Process Reengineering (BPR) in the
Danish public sector. It deals with the transformation of working processes when
BPR is applied in the analysis and redesign of the process flow in administrative
practices. Potential divergence between the rationality underlying BPR and the
rationality among the caseworkers in the Social Services Administration in Burebjerg
municipality is analysed.
It is argued that the dominant rationale in the BPR approach to organisational
change is technical. This technical rationale is reinforced by the dominant approach
to the concepts of ‘value’ and ‘customer’ within BPR. These concepts are defined
largely in terms related to the market economy in most of the rhetoric on BPR change.
It could be argued that these concepts are very often limited and fall short of the
complexity in most working processes. Due to the underlying technical rational
❒ Peter Hagedorn-Rasmussen is a researcher at The Danish National Institute of Social Research,
Copenhagen, Denmark and Peter Vogelius is Chief Advisor in the Danish Ministry of Education.
 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main St., Malden, MA 02148, USA.
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focus, the BPR approach defines non-value-adding processes as all processes which
do not count in the technical rational approach to value.
While some work processes are in themselves predominantly technical rational,
there is some convergence between the approach to redesign and the embedded
rationality. In these cases processes of transformation do not cause severe conflicts in
rationalities because there is some convergence between what is conceived as ‘valueadding’ and what is seen to be the quality of services. This is not to say that BPR
processes are without problems in predominantly ‘technical rational departments’,
but that in terms of rationality there is, supposedly, a higher degree of convergence.
However, in contrast, we suggest that some work processes might diverge from this
approach to rationality and value. If so, we might be able to identify a ‘clash’ between
rationalities, which can take on very different empirical modes of expression; for
example open conflict, resistance, resignation, or manoeuvre, in order to avoid the
implementation of redesigned processes etc.
Grounded on research in a BPR change-process in a Danish municipality we focus
on the Social Services’ Administration. The case study was conducted in 1998, and
included both the Social Services Administration and Technical Administration. The
Central Administration was also included in order to understand their role in the
transformation of the change programme.
It was clear that some convergence occurred between the approach to work in the
Technical Administration and the propositions generated by means of the BPR analysis. However, in this we will focus on the findings we made in the Social Services
Administration. Here a ‘clash’ between rationalities occurred during the change process. In terms of the working environment this meant an increasing strain on
employees who resisted many of the propositions generated during the BPR analysis
and the consecutive redesign of work processes.
The research agenda was founded on a political process approach to change. The
applied concepts are e.g. political processes, political programmes, coalitions, conflicting interests, frozen and active politics. The framework is developed via a synthesis of newer labour process theory, actor network theory and organisational sociology (Hagedorn-Rasmussen et al., 1998). Within our framework we emphasise the
relational and transformative aspects of BPR (and other managerial tools, as well as
technology). By doing so we widen our understanding of the relationship between
the transformation of technology and managerial tools on the one hand, and between
actors, agency and conditions of possibility on the other.
Even though we speak about different rationalities in our description of the attitudes to work among the different actors and in the designation of basic principles
in the planning process associated to BPR, our use of rationality is rather narrow.
We restrict ourselves to discussing rationality in relation to work only, and not as
an integrated part of a more comprehensive concept of normativity (although it is
possible to do this, Soerensen and Vogelius (1991)).
Description of the research and methods
The field study was undertaken from February to July 1998. Empirically it is based
on 26 semi-structured interviews, and field observations, for instance, of how new
information systems related to changes in process and work flow. Furthermore, we
included a survey questionnaire in relation to the subject of change process and
its consequences for welfare and work. This questionnaire is also part of a crossorganisational study conducted in the research programme, SARA, of which this BPR
research project is a part.
A large amount of written material has also been analysed: material on the negotiations concerning contracts between the consultant firm and the municipality,
material on internal consultants’ training programmes and evaluations. In depth BPR
analysis reports with detailed process flow analyses, description and mapping, time
registration and interviews for the analysis, calculations on the processes, proposals
for the new organisation and redesigned processes etc. have equally been examined
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What is value-adding? 21
closely. These BPR analyses provided the background for the construction of an
internal contract between the different administrations’ executive managers and their
departmental managers. Those contracts have also been included as material. Further
written material such as internal newsletters, joint council committee summaries etc.
have also provided an insight into the transformations.
The 26 interviews with employees and managers in different areas of the municipality took about one hour each and were all taped and transcribed. The focus on
the themes in the specific interview was prioritised depending on the person interviewed. The interviews were semi-structured and focussed on different themes.
Three themes were of central importance, but they were prioritised differently by us
as interviewers depending on who was being interviewed.
The rise and dissemination of the BPR change programme—was the first theme. It
also concerned how the programme was continually transformed in the process. This
was the focus of attention when the interviewee had—or was expected to have—
an influential role in the central coalition, which undertook the programme. The
materialised changes and their consequences in terms of work processes, working
conditions, and so on were the second theme. This was prioritised in interviews with
the employees. The role of ICT was the third theme and was actually embedded in
the two others. The understanding of ICT’s role was partly related to the change
programme: How was ICT (not) part of the initial idea? When did it come into focus?
Who were the important actors in bringing it to the fore and so on. But the understanding of ICT’s role was also related to its consequences in terms of materialised
change, working conditions etc: How did it actually change the work and service
processes? How did the new processes support (or not) the ‘nature of work’ as understood for example by the employees?
Reengineering in the municipality Burebjerg
Danish tendencies in New Public Management
Danish public organisations are, as public organisations elsewhere, in an equivocal
quandary between clients’ and citizens’ demand, finance and budgeting, requirements of openness in the administration. Even though this is not new, it seems as if
the pressure that exists between politics and the users is increasing (Beck Joergensen
and Melander, 1992).
Municipalities are presently confronted with the ‘critical consumer’ as well. The
National Association of Municipalities describes this as follows:
The citizens and the users’ demand for incessantly better and more individually adapted public
services have marked the 90s. Citizens have become ‘critical consumers’ of public services and
make ‘consumer demands’ directed towards institutions as well as municipality politicians. The
municipal administration is now in a ‘customer-directed’ change process, where quality in the
citizen service—both the electronic and personal—are brought into focus (National Association
of Municipalities, 1999, our translation).
In recent years the focus has been displaced from ‘citizens’ towards ‘consumers’. The
public services are expected to be customised increasingly more towards the individual citizens. The debate accompanying this shift has been heavily influenced by concepts as competition, outsourcing, the opportunity to exit by choices between different services, increasing finance by individual users instead of by tax-payers, etc.
Higher professionalism and standardisation are required of the municipalities. Most
recently, for example, benchmarking has been introduced as an important instrument
in the public sector (Ministry of Finance, 2000). The municipalities are in a constant
process of change reflecting the demands from citizens and ‘critical consumers’;
meanwhile changes in laws and regulations require constant changes and adjustments in the process flow.
In the effort to achieve better control, new instruments have been applied. That is
privatised business, joint stock company organisation, management by objectives,
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outsourcing etc. (Beck Joergensen and Melander, 1992: 360). Also internal contracts
are an instrument that has been increasingly used in the later years (Greve, 1998).
During the BPR project of Burebjergs ‘internal contracting’ was transformed into
‘developmental contracts’. These were negotiated in the light of the BPR analysis.
New decentralised wage systems have been introduced as new control instruments.
Here, individual negotiations replace centralised negotiations. All of these administrative tools are negotiated in Danish municipalities in these years—including the
municipality of Burebjerg.
Within the last few decades it has become clear that these instruments of control
have become more influential in the municipalities’ administrative procedures and
approaches to management and control. The ‘marketification’ of the public sector
has recently been stressed and introduced into the Danish debate (Clausen, 1999).
The new instruments are interpreted and represented by the National Association of
Municipalities as a necessary response to the increasing demand for control, and
homogeneity in administrative procedures. Whereas the term marketification
expresses the relationship between the public sector and society at large—not least
the market—this process is also transformed into the internal approach to organising
and controlling the administrative processes. We choose to term this ‘managementification’ of the public sector. The internal managementification process runs at
the same time as municipalities are put under pressure to professionalise management in general. Private corporations and their approach to change and development
inspire the public organisations and their designs for change processes increasingly
(Jones and Thwaites, 2000). Business Process Reengineering, Total Quality Management, The Learning Organisation, Benchmarking etc. are concepts, which traditionally have been developed in relation to private corporations.
Facts about Burebjerg
Burebjerg is a mnemonic from Business Process Reengineering. Burebjerg is a middle
sized Danish municipality (number of inhabitants between 30,000 and 40,000), with
an ‘average’ administration for that kind of municipality. The field study was undertaken from February to July 1998. The municipality was dominated by the Social
Democratic Party and had a Social Democratic mayor in this election period. At the
time of the research a left wing party supported the Social Democrats. In previous
periods, the main parties in the local government were right wing parties.
Decentralisation of former state and county services had entailed great expenses.
At the same time, demographic changes resulted in increased expenditure for services concerned with children and elderly citizens. In recent years, the budget had
had a minor deficit (turnover just about 1 billion Danish kroner, (£83 million or
134.5 million). Approximately half of the budget was spent on the political areas
family/labour market and elderly/disabled, the schools budget amounted to one
fifth of the entire expenses. In the years to come, the municipality expected a steady
increase in the number of citizens engaged in active employment, while the increasing population of children, younger people, and elder people results in a relatively
large increase in expenditure.
It had been a clear political aim not to increase the cost of the municipal administration. Among other things, this had meant downsizing the organisation. In 1995,
it had been decided to downsize by 20 employees, which brought the reduction of
staff to a total of 60 employees within the last 8 years. A significant reduction, the
consequences of which were strengthened by the fact that this period also included
a steady transfer of services from state level to the local level. At the time of the field
study, there were 260 employees in the municipality administration.
The analysis is focused on the Social Services Administration. The administration
is divided into different departments of which one is labelled the Family Department.
This department is further subdivided into different groups. The Family Group is
one of those. We follow the BPR changes related to this group.
In recent years, the caseworkers had experienced an increased workload. The BPR
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What is value-adding? 23
project had been introduced in the area in a turbulent period during the spring of
1997. At that time there were several meetings between the caseworkers and the
management. The meetings concentrated on how to cope with the rising workload.
In summer 1997, the caseworkers were all reported absent owing to illness. At the
time, management interpreted this incident as a collective action. After some time,
the employees returned to work and there were meetings between management and
the employees. Agreement on some declaration of intent was achieved in order to
organise the work and in order to reduce the strain caused by the workload. The
caseworkers expressed moderate optimism. They expressed that only minor action
was taken. No thorough initiatives, to prevent the workload from causing strain at
the group and individual levels, were taken. The most immediate action had been
to place the responsibility for prioritising, when ‘heaps of cases’ were piling up, on
the group leader. This was meant to remove a burden (responsibility), from the caseworkers.
In the summer of 1998—while our field study was undertaken—the executive of
Social Service Administration gave notice. Apparently she would no longer take the
responsibility for the services provided and the conditions in the administration. At
least that was how the employees interpreted her resignation. By signing a collective
letter to the politicians they supported the executive and criticised the present conditions of work. For a period of time the executive for the central administration
acted as the executive for the Administration of Social Services as well.
The Family Group in the Social Service Administration
Characteristics and work processes
The Family Group counted eight caseworkers and a group leader. The services which
the Family Group provided included counselling families where youngsters have
trouble with schools or were involved in criminal activities, administering and allocating aid and appliances for the disabled, case work related to abuse or neglect of
children. Like most municipalities, Burebjerg has established ‘quick counters’, which
provided the routinised services; hence this was not a part of the caseworkers’ job.
In addition to the caseworkers, three administrative secretaries were part of the Family Group. The group leader in the Family Group was a professional caseworker.
The main impression was that the social workers were working on their own and
not as a team, although they had multiple contacts to other resources in and outside
the department such as doctors, schools, family counsellors, institutions and the like.
In defiance of the individual nature of the work situation, laws and regulations structure the work. Furthermore, the permanent pressure from management to reduce
costs (e.g. to reduce the number of grants according to legislation and to reduce or
hold back the number of costly transfers of neglected children and youngsters to
specialised institutions) contributed to the limited freedom of action.
According to the workers, the individualised work situation created a need for a
regular meeting with the colleagues. Weekly group meetings had been an important
occasion for collective and mutual supervision and support within the Family
Group’s social workers. It was a forum within which the individual caseworker
received professional advice in order to secure a high standard and quality of the
service provided. Meetings were also necessary to cope with the responsibility for
choices taken on behalf of other individuals in difficult situations. In short, the social
workers’ job could be characterised as individual, but at the same time based on
mutual support.
Very often the services of social workers are labelled ‘cases’. The social worker
may even be a caseworker. This is a concept that holds important symbolic connotations. From one point of view the ‘case’ represents a black box, which has a fixed
beginning and end. As such you have input and output. But this approach to the
services, and to the content of the black box, does not capture what the social workers
in our case study understood by the services they provided for their clients. Neither
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was the concept of ‘client’ clearly delimited to the individual person they confronted
when they had the ‘client-contact’ meetings, nor did causal relations give a straight
forward relation from ‘input to outcome’ in terms of a decision.
Instead, the service was apprehended as a process directed towards the client, but
also towards the network around the client. The network is a fluid entity. It can most
clearly be defined as the entities, individuals, institutions, groups etc. which, and
who, are necessary in order to solve the given problems. This could be the family,
schools, medical personal, other social workers etc.
Origin and transformation of the BPR program
At the outset, the municipality had the ambition to ‘service check’ the whole administration. They emphasised the need for an audit on correct and ‘good’ language and
the citizens’ accessibility to easy and well written information. At the same time the
service check aimed at reducing time spent on services in order to increase quality.
From the management this was seen as firm action towards the quandary; the quandary produced as a consequence of former reductions as well as of the increase in
the amount of services the municipality was supposed to provide its citizens.
In 1995, two staff members from the IT and finance department participated in a
conference on the subject of BPR, and suggested that this concept should be used
instead of a ‘service check’. The idea was accepted, and it was decided to hire external
consultants to conduct the BPR project. From the outset, the municipality wanted to
restrict the role of the external consultants to establish and conduct an education
programme. The programme should provide their own staff with the necessary qualifications regarding BPR and associated tools. Approximately 15 staff members were
chosen from different sections, although there was a bias towards academically educated professionals in their 30s employed in the central administration. In addition
to the training of this group, which was referred to as internal consultants, the external
management consultancy would function as coach, and monitor quality during the
BPR project.
The commission formulated the overall purpose for the BPR project. The central
goals for the BPR project were:
% to conduct an analysis of the municipality services regarding both resources, content and verbal
presentation % and further % it has to be evaluated whether the municipalities services is produced in a rational and efficient way, e.g. with a minimal use of resources and with the most
competent and responsible staff member meeting the citizen (Commission, our translation).
Job satisfaction was also part of the commission’s remit:
The overall purpose of the project is, by means of continued decentralisation; to create opportunities for increased user satisfaction, greater job satisfaction and a more efficient utilisation of
the existing resources. [%] Job satisfaction depends on, among other things, whether the
employees see that the citizens are satisfied with the services provided, but also whether the tasks
are solved under good working conditions % (Commission, our translation).
Throughout our field study it became clear that this theme had continually been
neglected. In the interviews, even when we inquired explicitly, job satisfaction had
disappeared from the process. Neither in the interviews with employees, managers,
shop stewards, internal consultants, nor in the minutes from the work council, it
seemed as if job satisfaction was further developed. It was not applied, nor was it
operationalised in terms of analysis and changes in work processes. At best the aim
tended to represent an unarticulated presupposition that there was a causal relationship between, on the one hand, increased efficiency and effectiveness (and consequently the time saved) and, on the other hand, increased job satisfaction.
Regarding the training of the staff members who had to become internal consultants, the goal was described in terms of three items:
쐌
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introduction to working as consultants;
introduction to the concept of BPR;
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What is value-adding? 25
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establishing a common frame of reference, including a mutual set of tools for
their work.
The external consultants were chosen to educate, train and assure the quality of
internal consultants in the municipality. Also in this area tools for detailed analysis
have been applied. The consultancy firm was interviewed as part of a theme
focussing on the uptake of BPR in a Danish context at an early stage of the BPR
project. The findings—and the practice in this case—support the notion of an underlying technical rational approach to the detailed analysis of processes (Koch et al.,
1999a, b). The internal consultants, who adopted tools provided by the external consultants through the training and team building, have practised detailed process
mapping, time registration, calculation of potential time savings etc. By interviewing
their colleagues from different departments in the potential reengineered processes
they have described the process flow in detail. This has been substantiated by time
registration to estimate the time spent on different processes and which has made it
possible to evaluate the time spent (and thereby the resources) on different processes
in correspondence with the ‘value’ added to the process.
ICT has not been treated as an independent issue in the commission for the BPR
project. This is true both for description of the strategy and for the more specific
initiatives mentioned in the commission. Nonetheless the BPR project operated with
a series of ICT initiatives from the beginning. In the beginning, the ICT initiatives
were formulated as a distinct project that evolved simultaneously with the BPR project. However, the new ICT initiatives quickly merged with the BPR project. ICT
became a part of nearly all major changes rooted in the BPR project. In the developmental contracts between the administration executives and departmental managers,
and in the practical implementation of the BPR project most of the ideas about the
way to organise the ‘production’ which incorporated new possibilities were consequences of ICT.
Approaches to BPR have always made a basic distinction in relation to the role of
IT. Broadly speaking, there are two positions. The first leans towards taking ICT into
consideration after the identification of the specific processes to be reengineered. The
second tends to let the reengineering phase be strongly informed by the possibilities
of ICT. In some cases, the term ‘IT enabled BPR’ is used (Koch, 1999). It could be
argued that our case leaned towards the former, but on the other hand the ICT
initiatives merged with the BPR project and many of the initiatives were clearly
enabled by ICT and the internal consultants were very ‘IT-minded. They knew how
to turn on the power’ as the project manager expressed it. A qualification that also
was a criterion for their selection for the role as internal consultants.
In the description of a comparative case study of BPR, Willcocks and Currie (1996)
argue that the methodology of IT-based change activities in relation to BPR, is frequently used in such a way ‘% that it marginalise human social and political processes and issues’. This resonates with our argument concerning the tendency to
favour technical rational approaches in BPR projects. The reasoning we propose in
the following sections also supports this.
Reengineering initiatives in the Family Group
As in the other administrative units, the internal consultants developed detailed
analysis reports. Processes that at former meetings had been selected by the different
units’ managers—and in part by employees—were analysed in details by the internal
consultants. The reports outlined suggestions for reengineered processes, and in
many cases included detailed calculations on potential time saving.
Also in the Family Department in the Social Service Administration the group of
internal consultants put forward suggestions which were later inscribed as part of
the internal ‘development contract’ between the executive managers in the administration and the departmental managers. Six major suggestions concerning changes
and innovations in organisation and labour processes were part of this contract with
the Family Group. Among those were the following controversial suggestions:
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쐌
쐌
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abolition of the weekly group meetings;
implementation of a journal for clients, run directly on the PC during consultation (the ‘client module’);
the individual social worker should write her journal directly (by the use of
client module) into the PC and, consequently, the administrative staff need not
any longer type (/generate) the journals on the base of notes from the social
workers;
a new datasilo—accessable for many different departments in the administration.
As a consequence of the BPR project, it was decided to abolish the weekly group
meetings. Supported by the internal consultants’ approach to the social work as
‘cases’, described earlier, the idea was to create a reengineered approach to solving
the social problems. The idea was to break up the processes into small sub-processes
that were expected to have causal relations between problems and decisions. These
should be substituted, aligned and supported with decisions-tools by means of ICT
systems. The social workers should draw on the database to get experiences and
decision support—the new Client module (see below) should facilitate this. We have
drawn attention to the fact that the social workers appreciated the group meetings,
not only as a social event between colleagues, but as an important support in the
decision making and as a professional opportunity for supervision between colleagues. The internal consultants were of the opinion that the group meetings were
superfluous. The function of the meetings could be fulfilled anyhow, since the
employees in the Family Group would always have some time to spare, in the corridor, at the photocopying machine etc., which would ensure this professional dialogue.
The idea with the so-called client module was to create an extra extension to the
new general system for the management and administration of cases across the entire
administration in the municipality. This system included an automatic generation of
journals. A system that was implemented in most of the administrative units at the
same time as the BPR initiatives. In the Social Service Administration it meant that
the social workers was supposed to be able to write journals directly into PCs leaving
the secretaries with more time for other new assignments. In the past, the social
workers had used notes and Dictaphones when working with clients’ journals. The
secretary had afterwards journalised the information and kept them up to date. This
also meant that the secretaries often were able to help clients, or other relevant individuals and institutions that phoned them in order to get some information on the
cases. As such they functioned as a kind of ‘gate keeper’ for the social workers. The
new administrative system was supposed to substitute these by means of information
technology. The client module was planned to be new administrative software to
govern the evaluation of the client’s situation—a sort of ‘expert system’. As such it
was supporting the transformation from ‘old hand-written’ journals to ICT-based
journals as well as enabling ICT-based decision making and casework.
Consequently there was a changed division of labour between social workers and
the administrative staff. The individual social worker wrote her journal, via the
system, directly on the PC with as short delay as possibly—and preferable during
the consultation; at the same time this would free the administrative staff from this
duty and they could be assigned to other tasks. The proposal is a ‘main stream’ BPR
initiative hence the internal consultants were convinced that it could reduce the task
and responsibility shift and thereby increase the accountability when the task was
fulfilled by one person ‘on the spot’.
The BPR analysis revealed the need for some new data structures that could ensure
the sharing of data between at least the different groups in the Family Department,
and maybe across the whole Social Service Administration. This initiative was labelled the datasilo and the goal was to achieve a rationalisation of the ‘production
process’. In general it involved an idea about how to organise and structure the
workflow and share data between individuals, groups and departments.
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What is value-adding? 27
BPR, rationality and the concept of value
The focus on the external customer is often said to be essential in the BPR approach.
This is partly opposed with the more incremental approaches as for instance TQM,
where the customer focus is also central, but where it is argued to be primarily the
internal customer, the customer in the next department. In BPR one is supposed to
take down the functional silos: ‘Don’t automate, obliterate %’ (Hammer, 1990), and
build up the new process by concentrating on the external customer.
However it is important to take into consideration the context and values which
supposedly is embedded in public administration. As Taylor et al. (1997) point out
in one of the few books dealing specifically with BPR in public administration, public
organisations are to be understood as formed historically.
They are knowledge reservoirs filled from the streams of policy and decision which have flowed
for decades, if not centuries. Dare we talk so crudely then about their obliteration (op. cit.: 2).
There might be a tendency to disregard the tacit and embedded knowledge, a tendency reinforced by the top-down (Lenk, 1997: 157–8) and unitaristic approach undertaken in most BPR management initiatives (Blair et al., 1998).
Whereas private corporations have relatively delimited goals, products and market
segments, these boundaries are more ambiguous when we speak about public organisations. The services provided by public organisations are not only provided for
well defined customers, or clients, they are also directed towards the citizen as such:
besides the responsibility of ‘creating value’ for the individual client or customer,
the public organisation provides services in order to ensure social security—services
which together have to support a broad societal reproduction. Bureaucracy, the
influence of democracy and the primacy of politics embedded in the organisation
characterise public administrations (Thaens et al., 1997: 24ff). Stability and continuity
have therefore been fundamental attributes of administrative activity. This stability
is challenged by BPR and the general impetus for what can be labelled as monocratic
control, to satisfy the need for managerial control (Taylor et al., 1997: 11–12).
If we extend Taylor’s argument, the specific character of the public sector will
probably give rise to a different conception of ‘value’. Value cannot be understood/
defined separately from the political context in the public sector where debates on
sensitive matters frequently draw attention to specific cases in the social sphere (bad
living conditions for the elderly, abuse of children etc.)
Of course we know that the radical BPR approach is transformed during
implementation. The tools implied draw upon a wide range of instruments from
simplistic diagrams of the organisational structure to in depth studies and analysis
of already existing processes that are translated and materialised in the reengineering
or redesign of new processes. Many reengineering projects may be decoupled from
the actual practice of work. Even the most radical approaches to redesign and reengineering are seldom totally ahistorical, acontextual or aprocessual. The little ‘re-%’
indicates that even though the rhetoric suggest otherwise, the gurus who advocate
radical approaches to the change processes are also aware of their contextual and
embedded character. The new processes are not designed from scratch. Although
with different degrees of acknowledgement, the ‘clean sheet of paper’ approach is
left behind as primarily a rhetorical statement. This is not to say that this rhetorical
statement is unimportant. It does have important symbolic significance in order to
establish visions of radicality as a means of change management (Kotter, 1999;
Badham and Buchanan, 1996).
However, it also means that we need to develop an enhanced understanding of
the approaches in order to plan and analyse the reengineering. How is the analysis
conducted? Which are the important criteria for judging the outcomes of the analysis
and the redesign of processes? What is interpreted as valuable for the customer?
Since there is empirical evidence that the content of BPR programmes is transformed
from idea to social dynamic, there is not one answer to those questions. There is
reason to allow those questions be situated in contextualised agendas of research on
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actual BPR projects. On the other hand, some general approaches, in terms of
methods, seem to be applied in many of the BPR change processes.
Breaking up and digging in the process flow—in search for value
The customer focus is part of a fundamental thought on which the analysis, process
mapping, process measurement etc. are conducted and evaluated. The customer
becomes the king, and process reengineering becomes indisputable. It is clearly
linked to the understanding of what is valuable and what is not. This concept of
‘customer’ is applied rhetorically to support the legitimacy of BPR in most BPR
approaches. But the significance and the implicit line of arguments are seldom elaborated.
In the MIT research programme ‘Management in the 90s’, it is possible to find an
exception. The research programme was part of the network generating the ideas for
BPR. Based on Porter’s concept of Value Chain, Hugh MacDonald, a participant and
contributor to the research programme, outlined a Value Chain Model, which overcame some of the pitfalls created by the predominant focus on costs. It is argued
that the traditional value chain approach generated by Porter
% may reflect presuppositions regarding the structuring of activities and hence the processes the
organization uses. Having accumulated costs in an assumed (process) structure, it is extremely
difficult to decompose the value chain to show higher activity granularity, as may be necessary if
any major restructuring is to be considered, particularly of business processes (MacDonald, 1991).
In order to create transformations that can give sustainable competitive advantage
it is therefore argued that three issues have to be resolved. First, it is necessary to
understand and define criteria that justify change. This includes how it is possible
to be more efficient and effective. Second, one needs to get the right players involved
and committed. Third, one will have to ensure that the necessary information is
available (op. cit.: 404). The benefits of changes are characterised by four areas: lower
costs, improved process effectiveness, output quality and business expansion or
change (op. cit.: 404–5). We cannot hold MacDonald responsible for the ideas and
tools applied in BPR projects in general. But the approach to value and the detailed
analysis in order to search for value-adding processes, as well as non-value-adding
processes, are often important elements. By searching for these it supposedly
becomes possible to eliminate non-value adding labour processes as well as constructing the new labour process with value adding processes up front.
Hammers (and Champy’s) radical approach does not include a description of a
plan for the BPR journey: ‘reengineering cannot be planned meticulously and
accomplished in small and cautious steps’ (Hammer, 1990: 105). BPR is often represented as a strategic response to changes in the surrounding which is indisputable.
If you do not do it, you cannot survive. This might be true for some extraordinary
contextual examples, those that have given mythical proportions to BPR, but cannot
be a general approach for understanding change. Even in the mythical successful
cases it is doubtful whether this can be the case. Partly because of the prescriptive
and normative character they are often embedded in, and partly because history is
written backwards (Davenport and Stoddard, 1994).
Interpretative flexibility is applied in setting an important agenda for change. This
vision and the ‘burning platform’ are elements in change management, where
stretched goals are important so the changes in market, technology, socio-political
factors and so forth are interpreted leaving the organisation with a non-choice: take
the radical approach! The urge for a radical need has rhetorical resonance in cultural
conditions in the presence (Case and Grint, 1998).
Although a digression, this is an understanding of the inherent political approach
to change management, which in this case also incorporates strategic choices in establishing the interpretations of the surroundings. Leaving this, we would like to stress
the more fully elaborated descriptions of approaches to BPR changes. Braganza and
Myers (1997) have studied different approaches. One of the findings was that either
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What is value-adding? 29
mapping or measuring current processes are identified as stages in BPR projects. The
development of visions and objectives, setting stretch targets and identifying processes are some of the stages well covered in the literature which at the same time
is identified as stages before measuring and mapping (op. cit.: 8). But after those,
mapping and measuring current processes seem to be well acknowledged as underlying methods in the prescriptive approaches to BPR.
Our own research on BPR has shown that there is neither one fixed interpretation
of BPR, nor a closure of the concept (Hagedorn-Rasmussen, 2000). It has also shown
that consultancies’ approaches to BPR are not fixed approaches to practising BPR
(Koch et al., 1999a; Vogelius et al., 1998). In fact, the relationship between consultants
and managers is highly complex and partly driven by the need to secure the sense
of control over the environment (Sturdy, 1997; Jackson, 1996). For the consultants, it
means balancing between the technical skills and the socio-political skills of change
management (Fincham and Evans, 1999; Bloomfield and Danieli, 1995). In this process, programmes are in part transformed both when taken up in different national
settings, and in the organisational context. Nevertheless, some mutual interpretations
are important, and some general ideas can be traced in the methods applied. The
focus on customers and the evaluation of what is (not) value-adding has been fundamental. Also, here, the concept of value has not been developed, but has primarily
been reduced to a common sense understanding of what value is, which in the practical application of BPR has meant a primarily instrumental understanding of value
in terms of efficiency and effectiveness.
Rationalistic tools for breaking up the labour process, and mapping and measuring
processes have also been a high priority. By applying those tools detailed analysis
of the process flow is conducted. First the (labour) process is divided into small
entities. Afterwards it is open for reengineered and ICT-enabled changes. In this
process, the technical rational approach is favoured, and the inherited politics in the
change processes is often neglected (Knights and McCabe, 1998). Furthermore, this
contributes to marginalisation of human and socio-political dimensions (Willcocks
and Currie, 1996; Willcocks et al., 1997; Taylor et al., 1997; Willmott, 1994a, b). Even
the most obvious potential for integrating human aspects (which also has been
stressed by one of the BPR gurus Davenport (1994a, b) is that the mapping and
measuring could include potential for supporting the work and services provided
by employees. The reengineering process does have potential for internalising the
knowledge and situational experiences achieved by employees as an attempt to support job satisfaction. But it needs to be reflected as a prioritised goal. By bringing
forward the opportunities to support the labour process, job security, reduction of
strain and opportunities for development of work (Hagedorn-Rasmussen and Hvid,
1997). Our case demonstrates, that job satisfaction was actually part of the commission at the beginning of the change programme. But in the ongoing process of
change the theme was disassociated and excluded in terms of the changes that
materialised. The limited approach to ‘value’ and ‘customer’ which is often applied,
also in our case study, excludes the broader themes from the change programmes
agenda.
Relationship between services, labour process’, and the
concepts of value and rationality
As already mentioned the BPR initiatives in the Family Group included a decision
about the abolition of the weekly group meetings. We will, in the following section
present some empirical material to illustrate how the caseworkers’ opinions about
work, differ from the picture given by the internal consultants.
From the internal consultants point of view the new ICT structures (‘client module’,
a legislation database and the datasilo), combined with elaborated written instruc30
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tions,1 should provide the individual social caseworker with decision support in difficult cases. The new tools should eliminate the need for weekly meetings.
A caseworker, ‘Dorte’ (aged nearly 40 with some 10 years experience as a case
worker, of which the last 2–3 has been in the Burebjerg municipality) provided some
insights to the role of the group meeting. In relation to mutual professional sparring
Dorte maintained:
% it is not a license-meeting [authors: meaning arbitrarily to comply or decline license]—it is the
place where we debate the difficult cases—it’s there we debate if there is a basis for compulsory
removal of a child—and talk about how to approach the family and how we ensure being sufficiently informed—it is simply there we ‘turn’ the hard cases and get some professional input
before going ahead, not to be left alone with the ‘stuff ‘ (our translation).
Dorte describes the internal consultants position regarding the group meetings in
her own words in this way:
the meetings are supposed to produce a result, an outcome. And you have to be able to see that.
And that’s just not possible. You are just not able to see [conceive] an in depth discussion of the
case. It’s not visible, you know! Somewhere there will be a conclusion, but it’s up to the individual
caseworker how you decide to work further on the case (our translation).
Dorte points to the simple fact that you cannot directly see a debate in terms of a
product, and that, from her point of view, it only counts for the consultants if they
can identify a product directly. She points out that a conclusion is reached in the
different cases debated at the meeting. But the conclusion is drawn by the individual
caseworker after the meeting, and is strictly speaking not a product of the meeting.
It is up to the individual caseworker to decide how to administer the debate. But
that does not reduce the value of the debate, according to Dorte. Here again we see
a great difference between the processual oriented understanding represented by
Dorte, in contrast to the number of closed cases which were the focus for the product
oriented understanding of the internal consultants.
It is obvious that the missing consensus regarding the character of the product
also reflects itself in the attempts to determine the value of different production processes in the Family Group. An example: if a certain social benefit has to be allocated
to a client, the average casework could, due to the BPR reengineering, be reduced
from 5 to 3 weeks. But does this reduction express increased value if it at the same
time means that there is no time left for dialogues about the client’s problems of
abuse or problems with family dynamics?
The ICT assisted reformulation of the workflow in the consultants’ vision favours
cases that can be classified in homogeneous groups. But what is a standard case in
the family group? We asked Dorte. First she, with a smile, denies the existence of
such an artefact as a ‘standard case’, but accept after some ‘pressure’ how a ‘not
unlikely’ case could look like:
hmm, yes, for instance, it could be a 16-year-old who cannot figure out being home together with
the parents. Maybe he beat them and got kicked out. Live at home again for a while, and then
it turns out not to work anyway % Might live on the street for a while and commit some crime.
We seek to reach him, but then he doesn’t attend the appointments. That kind of case—how do
you go about something like that? How are we supposed to speak with the parents? What should
we stress etc. etc.? (our translation).
In relation to the idea of a decision support system, it seems rather unspecific and
difficult to deal with, as is the case with a lot of contextual based problems. This
does, of course, not mean that it is impossible to establish a system with some systematic checklists and easy access to relevant legislation etc. But this is not in anyway
as ambitious as the consultants’ ideas.
If we for a moment assume that the internal consultants should have been able to
cope with the social case workers understanding of work, it would have required a
set of methodologies, including open in depth interviews, with a broader agenda,
1
As known from hospitals where it is used for the support and quality enforcement of diagnoses.
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What is value-adding? 31
which could enlighten the core elements in work as they are experienced by the
social workers. This is definitely not a part of the standard repertory of BPR and
would have, furthermore, clashed with the notion that the approach should be able
to return objective measures for the performance of the reengineered organisation
(which they, in fact, did at a very detailed level).
Concluding remarks
Our claim is that the different actors in the Family Group and related actors disagreed
about what kind of service they produced. The social workers on the one side and
the internal consultants and parts of the management on the other side had simply
different definitions of the kind of product the Family Group was delivering.
For the internal consultants were the service cases. Cases with a well defined start
and end. Efficiency is merely estimated in terms of the output, e.g. decisions regarding the clients according to social legislation and regulations. For the social workers,
the ‘product’ was not only the specific output—all though a basic non-neglectable
element. A dimension we call ‘processual’ was profound in their conception and
presentation of their own work. The basic logic in this more processual approach
was reflections about the ‘good’ (social-) professional work with clients. The part of
their work, which was clearly influenced by this rationality, was based upon/
inspired from the outset by ethical and communicative roots and not from a purposive rational understanding of action.
The caseworkers experienced the BPR with all its rhetoric and tools for implementation as some sort of instrumental reduction of the perspective they had on the cases.
Given the ‘instrumental reduction of perspective’ we will argue that change in
the production process due to the introduction of BPR initiatives in Social Service
Administrations are not ‘neutral’ tools for rationalisation, neither for the staff nor for
citizens. The normatively defined understanding of the ‘product’ and the definition
of ‘value’ heavily influence the delivery of social services, which dominates Social
Service Administration. As we have illustrated, BPR becomes a part of the struggle
to understand and define the product, a struggle between incompatible positions
of rationality.
In this article we have not drawn upon the potentials for comparative analyses
between the two administrations (Social Service and Technical) we have been studying. But as we have briefly mentioned, we also noticed problems connected to
implementation of BPR in the Technical Administration. The nature of the problems
was not as deeply rooted as we revealed in the Social Service Administration. Instead
we saw problems related to participation, but the basic inconsistency in rationality,
which was profound in the Family Group, could not be found in the Technical
Administration.
Which the problems are, that one has to face during implementation of BPR in the
public or private sector, cannot be defined without taking into account the contextual
characteristics of the sector. The services in the public sector, which are subjected to
BPR, are often related to areas which have social and human problems in focus. How
to define value therefore often rises as a central conflictual theme, as described in
the Burebjerg case.
We have on some occasions been asked if we consider it possible to install other
goals—not restricted to the domain of purposive technical rationality inherited in
BPR—in a BPR-driven change process. The purpose should, apparently, be to achieve
‘some development of work’ with a BPR process, which at the same time assured
an increase in efficiency. An answer on the basis of the experience from this case
study do not provide grounds for much optimism, but it is hard to give universal
answers—a characterisation of the work in question will be a part of background for
an answer.
32
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