Value-Focused Business Process Engineering : a Systems Approach with Applications to Human Resource Management

One of the keys to successful business process engineering is tight alignment of processes with organisational goals and values. Historically, however, it has always been difficult to relate different levels of organizational processes to the strategic and operational objectives of a complex organization with many interrelated and interdependent processes and goals. This lack of integration is especially well recognized within the Human Resource Management (HRM) discipline, where there is a clearly defined need for greater alignment of HRM processes with the overall organizational objectives. Value-Focused Business Process Engineering is a monograph that combines and extends the best on offer in Information Systems and Operations Research/Decision Sciences modelling paradigms to facilitate gains in both business efficiency and business effectiveness. The first part of the book examines a wide range of research issues in modelling business processes and objectives by expanding the focus of business process engineering from creating more efficient business processes to also making them more effective. The second part of the book presents methodology and tools for a holistic approach to business process engineering within the HRM context. The original contribution of the value-focused process engineering methodology lies in the integration of the best aspects of event-process driven chains and the value-focused thinking within a single model, in a way that preserves the strengths of the respective models while facilitating the emergence of new properties that satisfy goal-oriented business process modelling requirements. The result is an up-to-date expository monograph that provides industry practitioners and researchers in OR/MS and IS domains, as well as those concerned with the practice of HRM, with a framework and implementation guidelines for ensuring that day-to-day business activities are congruent with organizational values and strategic objectives.