Colloquium+ +December+04+ +Sepehri,+Mashayekhi+and+Mozaffar

7/27/2019 Colloquium+ +December+04+ +Sepehri,+Mashayekhi+and+Mozaffar

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Transformation of Higher Education System in a Developing Country, by M. Sepehri, A. Mashayekhi, A. Mozaffar

Transformation of Higher Education System in a Developing Country

Case of Decentralization and Reengineering of Faculty Hiring Process

Mehran Sepehri1, Alinaghi Mashayekhi, Abbas Mozaffar

Graduate School of Management and Economics, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran

UNESCO Colloquium on Research and Higher Education, Paris, December 2004

Abstract:

A case of national level Higher Education in Iran, a largescale multi-organization system, is

formulated, evaluated, and reengineered in order to transform the system into an effective andefficient set of business processes. The overall mission, objectives, measurement indicators,

macro and micro-level business processes, and inter and intra organization dependencies are

developed. A methodology combining strategic modeling and business process reengineering is

applied to integrate vertical and horizontal relationships. A measurement system is used tomonitor the performance of the system. Pilot processes are mapped, evaluated, and re-designed.

Keywords:business process re-engineering, system integration, higher education.

Introduction:

Business Process Reengineering (BPR) concepts introduced by Hammer and Champy[1] has

been responsible for reviving many service and manufacturing companies throughout the

world[2]. However, BPR techniques have not been applied at national level to a complexsituation such as Higher Education system. Moreover, the current BPR methodologies do not re-

design the overall mission and strategies but only the business processes, and total quality

measurements are only an implicit part of the new system.

A business process consists of a set of logically interconnected activities through which actorsconvert inputs into outputs to achieve a certain purpose. The process may be viewed as a time-


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d d f i l d i i i h d ib h i i f i i


A team of researchers at Sharif University of Technology has been working with SRTMs key

executives to define the problem and an appropriate methodology. The problem is first viewed

from macro-process level, and then zoomed into sub-processes and micro-processes. A pilot is

chosen to verify the approach and to create a model for the subsequent analysis. Current situationis studied to recommend new processes with appropriate measurements.

Iran Parliament and government recently moved to delegate full authority to universities in hiring

instructors and staff, promoting faculty, admitting students, and providing administrative support.

Until now, a centralized system required that all activities of universities, even hiring a temporaryfull-time instructor, be evaluated and approved by the SRTM through a lengthy and cumbersome

process. Such practice for the past twenty five years, which may be extremely hard to change

now, assured the government full control of quality and overall consistency.

For the past two years, the authors have been involved with a research project with IransMinistry of Higher Education to evaluate and reengineer various administrative processes which

go through many organizations with different objectives and priorities. The current as-is state,

which has been fully documented, shows enormous amount of delays and waste where a facultycandidate in high demand, for example, has to wait months before he/she is officially hired and

paid. Lack of proper need assessment and manpower planning at the college level also creates

reactive demands of the overworked system.Iran is a developing country with a high percentage of youth awaiting college education. Rich innatural resources, it has not developed the infrastructure and capabilities to manage its

widespread and diverse education system. From a controlled and centralized hiring system to

local and customized faculty selection process introduces tremendous change, not only inadministrative procedures but also in cultural and organization relationships. With over 80% of a

university budget from the government, there is little room to invest in aggressive developments.

The authors have developed a proposed set of reengineered processes, which are beingimplemented at Sharif University of Technology as a pilot case. Much discussion has preparedthe university administration to use the new system on a limited basis, starting Summer 2005. An

expanded university human resources function will work-out and announce the projected faculty


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BPR in Higher Education

Fundamental principles in higher education are solitude and freedom of academic faculty and

functionally include research and teaching. Higher education, due to strong existing culturewhich does not seems to fit the present era, have faced financial and structural crisis. It must berefined with respect to new methods and existing technologies to provide knowledge

development and transfer in more productive ways. Virtual classrooms, digital libraries,

computer simulation and many more technologies affects the core of higher education i.e.

knowledge development and transfer.

On the other hand, cutting academic research budgets, questioning the economic value of

academic research, and demanding only relevant research from the best or the cheapestuniversities increase the problem. Beside that, the number of students has increased significantly,

the professors have isolated from real changes in the world, and a contradiction of independencyand destroying the fundamental principles. This demands a radical process redesign, which is

mainly driven by the new technological possibilities and the new learning environments [5].

Martin[6] proposes a model for process redesign in four levels. In the first level, there is

procedure redesign, where fundamentally new ways to do existing processes are required.Without such fundamental process redesign, the risk that significant investments in reengineering

yield few, if any, improvements in productivity increases. It may involve automation of activities,or improved information dissemination, but it does not necessarily require replacing currentprocesses or organizational structure.

In the second level, process reinvention, radical changes in processes are sought to achieve

significant breakthrough improvements in customer service. This level focuses on an end-to end

set of activities that delivers particular results to a given customer for example student servicescan be seen as value streams. In this level customers needs drive the redesign of the process,

rather than customers being required to adjust to the needs of processes. Educational programsand research are examples of primary processes and human resources and financial managementare examples of support processes.

Thi d l l t i d i d l ith l t d i hi h i h t i d ith hi h


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Concentrating on procedure redesign and process reinvention which deals with stand alone

micro-processes may be wasteful prior to this holistic view. Because they should be justified in

the new system before any attempts is made for their improvement. Also they will help to

enhance the coherency and alignment with the system strategy and environment. No studytouches this level for higher education in the national level.

A procedure is required to select a macro-process among many for in-depth analysis. This helps

to concentrate on the most effective processes and provides the ground for a rational procedure of

incremental re-engineering which is critical in complex systems with many processes. Integrationof different processes in the same level and among different levels is the next challenge that

should be addressed. This paper addresses these issues in the context of the case study.

Overall Approach:

Although BPR has been formally in use for over a decade, an expanded and integrated approach

is needed to formulate and reengineer the Higher Education case at national level, since: a)problem definition and formulation are as important and challenging as a proposed solution; b) it

is essential to examine and revise processes at both macro and micro levels; and c) it should

include both inter and intra organizational processes and interactions. The primary focus of this

case study is to improve the performance of business processes in higher education. However,to achieve this objective, overall mission and macro processes need to be evaluated and possibly

re-designed. Thus, both macro and micro processes should to be studied and evaluated in a

uniform and integrated approach. An overall approach is designed to review both strategicmodels and detailed processes, with a preparation phase.

0. Preparation, Organization, and Project Planning

a. Problem Definition and Methodology Development, Project Planning

b. Organizing Work Teams and Steering Committee, Contract and Negotiation

1. Identification of Overall Mission and Macro Processes at National level

a. Review of Documents and Resolutions of SRTM and Literature

b. Review of Existing Macro Processes and Current Interactions


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c. Overall design of selected micro processes based on above information

6. Detail Design of Micro Processes

a. Identification of objectives and measurementsb. Modeling and Detailed design of selected micro processesc. Design of support functions, quality assurance, and information systems

7. Design of Organization, Human Resources, and Procedures

a. Design of new organization structure and job descriptions

b. Evaluation of current and future work and human resourcesc. Development of procedures and work instructions

8. Education and Implementationa. Meetings and seminars for educating staff on new processes

b. Development of Plans for implementation of new processesc. Analyze feedback measurements and recommend corrective changes

Process Modeling:

A top down approach is used to first formulate the entire process at a strategic level, and then to

break the elements into detailed processes. A Porter model is employed to summarize the mainand support processes at overall national level for Higher Education. Regardless of who (what

organization) is involved, all activities and work done related to higher education fall in one ofthe categories, at macro level. Three main outputs are generated: education, research, and

technology application, all covered by support processes, please see Figure 1.


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The macro process of Human Resource Management for Faculty is chosen as a pilot, due to its

strategic importance and availability. The process is then broken down to a series of micro-

processes, which are further broken into detailed sub-processes and activities, please see Figure

2. This pyramid approach allows each macro process is related to subordinate sub-processes andthen be fully mapped, examined and reengineered.

If we consider the world-view of our case, the Porter Model, to be Level 0 Process, then the

succeeding process maps correspond to Levels 1, 2, 3 showing sub-processes and detailed

activities for each higher-level process in a logical order in Figure 3. Level 3 is then actuallystudied using the real cases and mapped into a very detailed map of activities with various

organizations involved, see Figure 4.


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quality of services. Recent changes in expanding higher education and global competition for the

best students and professors will break the monopoly and the solution is to treat the students as

customers. However, to assess the Human Resource Management processes of higher education

compared with core processes some issues should be considered.

The processes lengths are smaller than core processes; demand fluctuations are higher than;

human interactions are higher; flexible capacity is required; quality of service is less visible, and

requires invigilation of a hierarchy of indicators. All these make the assessment difficult. Our

approach to measurement indicators is to concentrate on three factors of cost, time and quality.Appropriate factors or a combination are chosen depend on the processes. For some processes

customers are sensitive about time while for others quality is the dominant objective.

The following table shows some assessment indicators for the Contract Hiring sub-processes.

This table indicates three main categories of indicators including required time for each process,number of steps, and number of internal (with other departments of university) and external (with

other organizations) interactions. Also time spent for each process is broken into different

segments from two aspects: types (operations, delay, move, and checking) and employees(managerial, technical, clerical and transportation). Figure 4 summarizes some of the temporal

indicators for the sub-processes of Contract Hiring as has shown in Figure 3.

Insert figure 4 about here

Figure 4. Measurement for Application Review

The table shows that the process of presentation of Application in University Committee in

average takes about 62 days with passing through 15 steps. Operation, checking, delay and

motion have happened in this process with 7, 0.7, 0.4 and 98.78 percent of the total elapsed time.According to this figure delays figure out the most time-consuming part of the process. In depth

analysis of the figure indicates that setting up the committee is the major source of delays and

always there is a large queue of applications waiting for their approval.


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for unit view. The set of information at each level collectively provide information at a higher

level. Therefore, a sub-process is associated with a sub-objective, and is measured by a sub-

criteria. The sub-objectives, in turn, are related to the higher objective.

The challenge for an organization is to coordinate and align the dimensions of its infrastructurehorizontally and vertically. That means there must be an integration and a balance between

process, objective, and measurement criterion horizontally, as well as systems and sub-systems

vertically. This is often not defined or documented, done intuitively and incompletely, and in not

updated as changes occur in the system. A unit may reengineer its activities, but be unable toalign the new set of activities with lower and higher steps or with corresponding objectives and

criteria.

We often see in organizations that the objectives have changed, but the processes and

measurement criteria have not followed. We also see organizations where sub-processes or sub-objectives are not connected to next level objectives and processes. Any local effort to improve

the process will not yield substantial results if it is not done with overall system perspective. A

methodology and a procedure are needed to define the various dimensions of an organization andto align these dimensions at macro and micro levels.

Figure 5. Hierarchy of Process-Objective-Criteria


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5. Develop the criteria to correspond to objectives at each level.

6. Determine the needed activities to accomplish objectives at each level.

7. Determine the needed resources to accomplish objectives at each level.

8. Determine of best location or organization unit to perform activities.

9. Review various sub-systems for consistency and balance at each level.

Prior to such detail work, an overall mission and strategy for the system must be developed.

Customer requirements and organization vision are used in shaping the strategy and definingvalue for the added value of processes. Measurement criteria include factors of expense, speed,

and quality for each process.

Proposed Solution:

The Pilot Process of Hiring Academic Faculty was reviewed and discussed with many

organizations involved. The problem with the exiting process is that there are too many separate

sub-processes done by different organization in a serial way. It takes long and is error-prone.Several steps are deleted, combined, or done in parallel. The aim is to empower one organization,

department, to evaluate the candidates and make a decision. At the same time, a review process to

assure the quality of the process.

Using a Clean Sheet approach, the most straightforward and efficient process was proposed, seeFigure 7. The objectives were to shorten the total time, reduce total number of steps, and improve

the quality. Sub-objectives were also defined, as processing time, review time, and contract time

under total time, and as number of satisfied applicant and number of mistakes and complaintsunder the quality. Corresponding measurement criteria were also defined.

In reviewing activities, several of them were deleted or postponed to a later time. Verification of

documents and background check, for example, were put off to be input to the next process of

contract renewal. Instead, a signed honor letter by the applicant at this stage speeds up theprocess. Not every application has to be reviewed by a higher committee. A university committee


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Work in Progress:

The pilot case, in which the contract hiring process for academic faculty was reengineered, has

actually generated much interest and excitement among other parts of the system. Therefore, weexpect that other groups volunteer to use the methodology in order to review and re-design theiroperations. The early results from the pilot case have not only proved the feasibility and

profitability of this work, but have also set expectations for other organizations to follow.

This work has been unique in showing the application of BPR to a large-scale non-for-profit

organization, actually for a multi-organization set of processes at national level with numerouscustomers. It also offers a unique and integrated methodology for looking at both macro and

micro processes. The approach searches out and documents the mission, intra-organizationinteractions, and at least three levels of process hierarchy. It also defines and relates processes,

objectives, and measurement criteria at each level.

In literature review of BPR, much has been written about the ideas and case applications.

However, an overall methodology is not yet emerged. Also, most past work has been on for profit

competitive organizations, and not for non-for-profit ones. This study has worked this existing

gap. The methodology has already been used in other parts of National Higher Education in Iran,and has been proposed to other government organizations, for example the Ministry of Trade and

Economics of Iran.

In the immediate future, further details of proposed solution is to be developed and verified,

before it is implemented nationwide. Special attention needs to be paid to the cultural-socialfactors. Users and managers need to support and be convinced of the value of the new processes.

Training, both formal and on the job, and work guidelines should be available. Although actual

results are not in yet, dramatic improvements are expected. For example, average total time ofapplication to contract for a new faculty is expected to be reduced by at least tenfold.


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References:

1 Hammer M. and Champy J. (1993) Reengineering the Corporation. New York: HarperBusiness.

2 Al-Mashari M., Irani Z. and Zahiri M. (2001). Business Process reengineering: a survey of

international experience.Business Process Management7(5): 437-455.

3 Lee Y and Elcan A (1996). Simulation Modeling for Process Reengineering in the

Telecommunication Industry.Interfaces 26: 1-9.

4 Giaglis GM Paul RJ and Doukidis GI (1997). Simulation for Intra- and Inter- Organizational

Business Process Modeling.Informatica 21: 613-620.

5 Tsichritzis D. (1999) Reengineering the University, Communications of ACM, 42(6), pp.93-101.

6 Martin J (1995) The great transition using the seven disciplines of Enterprise engineering to

Align people, Technology and Strategy,American Management Association, pp.

7 King WR (1994) Process reengineering: the strategic dimensions, Information SystemsManagement, 11(2), pp.71-73.

8 Grotevant S (1998) Business Process and Process Redesign in Higher Education: Art orScience?EDUCAUSE conference, pp.

9 Stahlke H (1998) Common Sense, Traditional Structures and Higher Education Reengineering

as Fundamental Inquiry, CUMREC conferences, pp.

10 Stahlke H. and J. Nancy (1996) Reengineering Higher Education: Reinventing Teaching andLearning, CAUSE/EFFECT, 19(4), pp. 44-51.

11 Adenso-Diaz B and A Canteli (2001) Business Process Reengineering and UniversityOrganization: a normative approach from Spanish case, Journal of Higher Education Policy

and Management, pp.63-73.


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Figure 3. Process of Contract Hiring


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Figure 4. Measurement for Application Review