Effects of triggers of change on business systems and work process / Raja Munirah Raja Mustapha

Forces such as increasing globalization, demographic change, European enlargement, and the emergence of networked organizations stimulate the emergence of new forms of organization and collaborative working. While it is recognized that' implementing organizational changes impacts both employee and organizational health, there is a lack of research that utilizes these known impacts to empirically build functional models that are predictive of future change event outcomes, in particular how change affect work process. The objective of this study is to determine the extent to which drivers of change influence business systems and how these environmental changes affect work process. Data was analyzed based on the 162 questionnaires returned and a series on multivariate analyses were conducted to test the hypotheses formulated. Results indicated that the environmental factors that trigger change in organizations as posited in this study, are, in fact, significantly related to all the business system variables - MIS, HRIS, ERP, Organising Systems and Works Systems. However, environmental scanning hypothesized to moderate the effect of change triggers on business systems only showed significant effect for only one variable. Environmental scanning capability, generally does not appear to moderate the effect of change on business systems. The business systems variables - MIS, HRIS, ERP, Organizing Systems and Work Systems contrary to the hypothesis of this study did not affect or show consistent influence on work processes. Of the moderators, Stakeholder Power and to some extent Slack Resources showed some effect. It appears from this study that the impact of business systems variables on work processes is limited and is conditioned by the presence of two of the above mentioned moderators. The inner most core technical of the organisation as Thompson opined is insulated from environmental changes. Therefore, more studies are required to fully understand the dynamics of change within organizations brought about by environmental triggers.