Content area
Full Text
Abstract
Purpose - Aims to investigate the importance of communication and conflict on the development of reengineering teams and attempts to answer the following research questions: is the team development of a reengineering team affected by conflict and communication, and if so, what are the types of communication and conflict that do affect it?
Design/methodology/approach - Presents a theoretical perspective with a literature review of such aspects as conflict and communication. Details research methodology and then utilises evidence from a single in-depth case study. Explains how the analysis occured and discusses the findings.
Findings - It was found that conflicts are not productive for the organisation and therefore conflict resolution is sought. In order to resolve the conflicts existent within the teams, the role of face-to-face communication was considered to be pertinent.
Originality/value - For industry that is always searching for ways to curtail excessive costs, an understanding of the issues of conflict, team development and communication is offered. This means that by examining the guidelines offered within this paper, a convenient method of identifying and solving these issues is provided.
Keywords Team management, Teambuilding, Conflict, Communication
Paper type Case study
1. Introduction
Within the current turbulent business environment, organisations are searching for measures that will allow them to improve their performance and competitiveness (Dodd, 2003). There have been several change management approaches employed through the years including, total quality management (TQM) and just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing. However, through the late 1990s and earlier years of 2000, the most emphasised approach has been that of business process change (BPC). Kettinger and Grover (1998) found that: "business process reengineering (BPR), process improvement, business process redesign, process innovation and process improvement" are terms used interchangeably to represent the phenomenon of "business process change". Based on this observation, it can be noted that the research used the term BPR and business process change interchangeably.
There are varying definitions of BPC, but for the purpose of this research, we define it as: "business process reengineering is a total replanning and redesign of manpower consisting of individuals, internal system, structure and processes in direct or indirect response to external forces, in order to achieve some objectives which are usually not easy to achieve given conditions of an organisation" (Poh and...