Abstract
(Englisch)
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This project aims at exploring the European way of taking up such fashionable reorganisation concepts for the enterprise arena, and to some extent too, for the public administration, generically identified as Business Process Re-engineering (BPR). As a continuation of a research line developed within COST A4 programme (1992-1997), PRECEPT stresses that some genuine clues are defining the way these re-organisational proposals (consultancy firms, enterprise' rhetoric) and operations in a variety of European settings (7 different countries, diverse sectoral specialisations, multiple scale and time perspectives) may be characterised. Interesting questions have been raised as what this management approach was becoming at the end of the 90s and at the beginning of the new decade, as either a prolongation of the same goal (reorganisation), or, in connection with ICT expansion (ICT being an important change factor the firm, or other dynamics, in particular linked with the research and policy shaping the knowledge society context.
Workpackages 1 and 2 occupied us the first research year, with comprehensive overall and nation-wise literature survey and analysis (WP1) and in-depth and comprehensive national uptake studies (WP2), shaping our view on not only European specificities but also national differences.
This second year of the PRECEPT research programme(WP3) was dedicated to fieldwork and formatting of case studies (3 per participating universities, 21 in all). They allowed us to explore a significant diversity of experiments and socio-economic and cultural situations. As for the Swiss player of PRECEPT, we undertook in-depth studies in the areas of: 1) a small size manufacturing enterprise in the medical engineering sector and 2) insurance with a major life insurance company and a general, more regional-styled insurance company, these two close cases allowing in particular an intra-sectoral comparison and evidencing the strong role played by ICTs as meta-organising facto (used in a slightly more specialised way in the medical engineering firm).
In addition to this advance in research, making meaningful our presentation in the three workshops that were part of this phase of PRECEPT (in Vienna, Ljubjana and Bilbao), we participated in various dissemination actions on the scientific scene, in international conferences, each time with the presentation of a paper (with even a prize for one of them), in related topics in Grenoble, Lyon and Orlando and Vienna. Let us add also, that at this stage, the preparation of PRECEPT's last phase (cross-cutting studies and final dissemination) has started already during this second year.
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