The present study investigated the important factors of communication, training, rewards and incentives, information technology and the role of the BPR team in the implementation of BPR in Malaysian service organisations, namely, Bank Islam Malaysia Berhad (BIMB), TELEKOM(telecommunication organisation) and Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM). The present study seeks to address the following objectives; (1) to examine the employees' and customers' perceptions of the implementation of BPR in three service organisations, (2) to identify and analyse the relative importance of factors contributing to resistance to BPR and its acceptance by employees, (3) to explore similarities and differences in the adoption and impact of BPR in the three service organisations and (4) to develop and test a model of internal and external customer satisfaction as a means of judging the important factors of BPR in service organisations.
The first stage of the present study started with interviews with managers of BIMB, TELEKOM and UPM. Secondly, survey method was used in order to collect quantitative data on customers' and employees' perceptions towards BPR implementation in the three organisations since customers and employees are among the essential sources of indicators of the success BPR implementation. 53 employees and 63 customers of BIMB, 48 employees and 60 customers of TELEKOM and 58 employees and 65 customers of UPM participated in the present study. Findings suggested that all the dimensions discussed were particularly relevant with different level of rank order and difference among the three organisations as perceived by their customers. They were: (1) assessment of specific requirement mean dimension, (2) the importance of service characteristics, (3) customers' satisfaction levels and (4) service-encounter. Interestingly, there exist differences in employees' perceptions towards the (1) organisation's BPR goals, (2)effect of the changes in work tasks and (3)clarity and acceptance of the different aspects of BPR communicated by management.
The third stage of the present study also used analytical survey design approach to analyse the factors influencing the implementation of BPR in the three organisations. Three different types of questionnaire were developed in order to collect data on team members', customers' and employees' perceptions towards the factors influencing the BPR implementation. Statistical analysis of the responses by the employees suggested that: (1) UPM scored the highest in `efficiency of management communication', (2) TELEKOM scored the highest in `salience of information', (3) TELEKOM scored the highest in `initiative in communication', (4) BIMB scored the highest in `effective communication channel', (5) TELEKOM scored the highest in `training within the organisation', (6) `rewards and incentives' showed a small difference in scores among the three organisations, (7) TELEKOM scored the highest in `information technology' and (8) all three organisations perceived that the reengineering team played as an important factor to the success of BPR implementation. Statistical analysis of the customers' responses showed that: (1) TELEKOM scored the highest in `the overall employees' performance', (2) BIMB customers scored the highest in `satisfaction levels' and `areas of improvement', (3) surprisingly, customers showed negative perceptions towards TELEKOM in terms of `encounter service' and (4) interestingly, TELEKOM customers rated a negative
composite index of weighted importance of the BPR implementation.