A firm decided to redesign its research and development process. Because the effort was critical to its success, the firm applied two parallel approaches to the process. One was a classical reengineering effort in which a small group of managers and consultants designed a radically different way to do research. In the other approach, a small team of researchers began to collect the organization’s knowledge about the entire R&D process, regulatory approvals, and international variations. The knowledge was embedded in a series of documents and in a Weblike hypertext computer system. The company also hired several “corporate anthropologists” to study how researchers used the knowledge.
A year after the two efforts began, the reengineering effort was stalled. The new process vision was viewed as too ambitious at a time when many other aspects of the company were changing. Scientists muttered that no one could force them to practice “bad science.” The more subtle knowledge collection effort, however, seemed to be succeeding. Many researchers had reviewed the documents and suggested changes or additions to the knowledge base. A greater sense of cross-functional understanding seemed to prevail; regulators, for example, reported that scientists were more willing to supply them with early research information. Specific improvement levels, however, were difficult to measure with confidence.
This example illustrates how the classical top-down reengineering approach for improving administrative or operational work... To read the complete article, login or sign-up using the form below.
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