Transformation of Higher Education System in a Developing Country, by M. Sepehri, A. Mashayekhi, A.

Mozaffar

Transformation of Higher Education System in a Developing Country Case of Decentralization and Reengineering of Faculty Hiring Process
Mehran Sepehri1, Alinaghi Mashayekhi, Abbas Mozaffar Graduate School of Management and Economics, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran UNESCO Colloquium on Research and Higher Education, Paris, December 2004

Abstract:
A case of national level Higher Education in Iran, a largescale multi-organization system, is formulated, evaluated, and reengineered in order to transform the system into an effective and efficient set of business processes. The overall mission, objectives, measurement indicators, macro and micro-level business processes, and inter and intra organization dependencies are developed. A methodology combining strategic modeling and business process reengineering is applied to integrate vertical and horizontal relationships. A measurement system is used to monitor the performance of the system. Pilot processes are mapped, evaluated, and re-designed. Keywords: business process re-engineering, system integration, higher education.

Introduction:
Business Process Reengineering (BPR) concepts introduced by Hammer and Champy[1] has been responsible for reviving many service and manufacturing companies throughout the world[2]. However, BPR techniques have not been applied at national level to a complex situation such as Higher Education system. Moreover, the current BPR methodologies do not redesign the overall mission and strategies but only the business processes, and total quality measurements are only an implicit part of the new system. A business process consists of a set of logically interconnected activities through which actors convert inputs into outputs to achieve a certain purpose. The process may be viewed as a timeordered sequence of interrelated activities that describe the entire experience of an entity as it flows through a system. These processes usually cut across functional or organizational boundaries. The outputs are passed on to customers who can be internal or external. The transformation process operates under certain environmental constraints, and the process owners execute monitoring and control. Business process modeling has received attention since the introduction of business process reengineering around 1990. To support this emerging perspective, a number of tools, methodologies, and technologies are used to analyze business processes. Lee and Elcan[3] describe process re-engineering in telecommunication industry. An application of BPR in an inter-organizational context is presented by Giaglis et al. [4]. Science, Research, and Technology Ministry (SRTM) of Iran is currently undergoing major changes to re-define its overall mission and organizational structure. The current set-up, evolved over years, is highly hierarchical and is filled with loopholes and wasteful procedures. Hiring of academic staff, for example, takes months to go through multiple committees and across several organizations with serial and manual procedures.
1

Corresponding author (sepehri@sharif.edu)

Transformation of Higher Education System in a Developing Country, by M. Sepehri, A. Mashayekhi, A. Mozaffar

A team of researchers at Sharif University of Technology has been working with SRTMs key executives to define the problem and an appropriate methodology. The problem is first viewed from macro-process level, and then zoomed into sub-processes and micro-processes. A pilot is chosen to verify the approach and to create a model for the subsequent analysis. Current situation is studied to recommend new processes with appropriate measurements. Iran Parliament and government recently moved to delegate full authority to universities in hiring instructors and staff, promoting faculty, admitting students, and providing administrative support. Until now, a centralized system required that all activities of universities, even hiring a temporary full-time instructor, be evaluated and approved by the SRTM through a lengthy and cumbersome process. Such practice for the past twenty five years, which may be extremely hard to change now, assured the government full control of quality and overall consistency. For the past two years, the authors have been involved with a research project with Irans Ministry of Higher Education to evaluate and reengineer various administrative processes which go through many organizations with different objectives and priorities. The current as-is state, which has been fully documented, shows enormous amount of delays and waste where a faculty candidate in high demand, for example, has to wait months before he/she is officially hired and paid. Lack of proper need assessment and manpower planning at the college level also creates reactive demands of the overworked system. Iran is a developing country with a high percentage of youth awaiting college education. Rich in natural resources, it has not developed the infrastructure and capabilities to manage its widespread and diverse education system. From a controlled and centralized hiring system to local and customized faculty selection process introduces tremendous change, not only in administrative procedures but also in cultural and organization relationships. With over 80% of a university budget from the government, there is little room to invest in aggressive developments. The authors have developed a proposed set of reengineered processes, which are being implemented at Sharif University of Technology as a pilot case. Much discussion has prepared the university administration to use the new system on a limited basis, starting Summer 2005. An expanded university human resources function will work-out and announce the projected faculty vacancies and collect applications for an initial screening. The new hiring process should be straightforward and painless. However, a reserved intervention/review process is available in case conflicts or complaints occur. The new proposed role for the Ministry of Higher Education is policy making and quality management. The Ministry is involved in long-term planning, a previously non-existent function, and developing new academic majors and department. It is also the ultimate judge for reviewing complex situations and monitoring overall performance statistics. The relationship between the government and universities, therefore, change from one of adversary to complementary. Universities gain autonomy, but are required to report their overall plans and statistics, which is a basis for future budgetary funding. Several performance indicators have been identified to be measured and monitored in this pilot implementation. This is to show quantitatively how the proposed system out-performs the centralized system in terms of flexibility, quality, speed, and cost. Results will be used to improve and fine-tune the processes, which are expected to be promoted nationwide. The lessons learned in this experiment will have benefits for future efforts in decentralizing and reengineering other government agencies. The keys to success so far are empowerment of local administration and demanding responsibility with authority.

Transformation of Higher Education System in a Developing Country, by M. Sepehri, A. Mashayekhi, A. Mozaffar

BPR in Higher Education

Fundamental principles in higher education are solitude and freedom of academic faculty and functionally include research and teaching. Higher education, due to strong existing culture which does not seems to fit the present era, have faced financial and structural crisis. It must be refined with respect to new methods and existing technologies to provide knowledge development and transfer in more productive ways. Virtual classrooms, digital libraries, computer simulation and many more technologies affects the core of higher education i.e. knowledge development and transfer. On the other hand, cutting academic research budgets, questioning the economic value of academic research, and demanding only relevant research from the best or the cheapest universities increase the problem. Beside that, the number of students has increased significantly, the professors have isolated from real changes in the world, and a contradiction of independency and destroying the fundamental principles. This demands a radical process redesign, which is mainly driven by the new technological possibilities and the new learning environments [5]. Martin[6] proposes a model for process redesign in four levels. In the first level, there is procedure redesign, where fundamentally new ways to do existing processes are required. Without such fundamental process redesign, the risk that significant investments in reengineering yield few, if any, improvements in productivity increases. It may involve automation of activities, or improved information dissemination, but it does not necessarily require replacing current processes or organizational structure. In the second level, process reinvention, radical changes in processes are sought to achieve significant breakthrough improvements in customer service. This level focuses on an end-to end set of activities that delivers particular results to a given customer for example student services can be seen as value streams. In this level customers needs drive the redesign of the process, rather than customers being required to adjust to the needs of processes. Educational programs and research are examples of primary processes and human resources and financial management are examples of support processes. Third level, enterprise redesign, deals with complete redesign which is characterized with high risk and high benefits including reduction of barriers to fast and fluid decisions. Finally, in the strategic visioning level, organizations strategic assumptions and visions should be constantly revisited. King[7] pointed out that the reason for the failure of organizational transformation efforts is high in organizations that view this transformation primarily as a technical rather than strategic effort. Grotevant[8] explores both policy and operational issues of higher education that can be affected by business process reengineering. Reengineering the university as a reform to rethink the core business processes of the university including teaching, research and learning rather than focus on bottom line is discussed [9] and a framework is proposed [10]. It is argued that for successful reengineering common sense beliefs about the core businesses of universities should be questioned. Adenso-Diaz and Canteli[11] discuss the objective need for a reform in the productive structure of the university and the elements that hamper the viability of introducing this reform. However, BPR is not well developed for higher education and many issues need to be addressed for effective implementation. As far as we know higher education as a whole is not revisited using a process world-view. This is an important issue, which lets strategic visioning and enterprise redesign and can lead to so-called macro processes.

Transformation of Higher Education System in a Developing Country, by M. Sepehri, A. Mashayekhi, A. Mozaffar

Concentrating on procedure redesign and process reinvention which deals with stand alone micro-processes may be wasteful prior to this holistic view. Because they should be justified in the new system before any attempts is made for their improvement. Also they will help to enhance the coherency and alignment with the system strategy and environment. No study touches this level for higher education in the national level. A procedure is required to select a macro-process among many for in-depth analysis. This helps to concentrate on the most effective processes and provides the ground for a rational procedure of incremental re-engineering which is critical in complex systems with many processes. Integration of different processes in the same level and among different levels is the next challenge that should be addressed. This paper addresses these issues in the context of the case study.

Overall Approach:
Although BPR has been formally in use for over a decade, an expanded and integrated approach is needed to formulate and reengineer the Higher Education case at national level, since: a) problem definition and formulation are as important and challenging as a proposed solution; b) it is essential to examine and revise processes at both macro and micro levels; and c) it should include both inter and intra organizational processes and interactions. The primary focus of this case study is to improve the performance of business processes in higher education. However, to achieve this objective, overall mission and macro processes need to be evaluated and possibly re-designed. Thus, both macro and micro processes should to be studied and evaluated in a uniform and integrated approach. An overall approach is designed to review both strategic models and detailed processes, with a preparation phase. 0. Preparation, Organization, and Project Planning a. Problem Definition and Methodology Development, Project Planning b. Organizing Work Teams and Steering Committee, Contract and Negotiation 1. Identification of Overall Mission and Macro Processes at National level a. Review of Documents and Resolutions of SRTM and Literature b. Review of Existing Macro Processes and Current Interactions c. Evaluation of Existing and Ideal Mission and Macro Processes 2. Selection of Macro Processes of SRTM for Pilot Study a. Design of Criteria for Selecting Pilot Marco Processes b. Recommendation of Macro Processes to SRTM and Verification c. Organization and Planning of Project based on Selected Processes 3. Evaluation of Marco Processes a. Design of Measurement Criteria for Evaluating Marco Processes b. Determination of Standard Practices for Macro Processes c. Evaluation of Existing Macro Processes and Report to SRTM 4. Selection of Pilot Micro Processes and their Evaluation a. Determination of Criteria for Selecting Pilot Micro Processes b. Recommendation of Macro Processes to SRTM and Verification c. Collection of Detail Information and Evaluation of Micro Processes 5. Gross Design of Selected Micro Processes a. Evaluation of literature and benchmark on selected macro processes b. Re-design of objectives based on policies and customer feedback

Transformation of Higher Education System in a Developing Country, by M. Sepehri, A. Mashayekhi, A. Mozaffar

c. Overall design of selected micro processes based on above information 6. Detail Design of Micro Processes a. Identification of objectives and measurements b. Modeling and Detailed design of selected micro processes c. Design of support functions, quality assurance, and information systems 7. Design of Organization, Human Resources, and Procedures a. Design of new organization structure and job descriptions b. Evaluation of current and future work and human resources c. Development of procedures and work instructions 8. Education and Implementation a. Meetings and seminars for educating staff on new processes b. Development of Plans for implementation of new processes c. Analyze feedback measurements and recommend corrective changes

Process Modeling:
A top down approach is used to first formulate the entire process at a strategic level, and then to break the elements into detailed processes. A Porter model is employed to summarize the main and support processes at overall national level for Higher Education. Regardless of who (what organization) is involved, all activities and work done related to higher education fall in one of the categories, at macro level. Three main outputs are generated: education, research, and technology application, all covered by support processes, please see Figure 1.

Transformation of Higher Education System in a Developing Country, by M. Sepehri, A. Mashayekhi, A. Mozaffar

The macro process of Human Resource Management for Faculty is chosen as a pilot, due to its strategic importance and availability. The process is then broken down to a series of microprocesses, which are further broken into detailed sub-processes and activities, please see Figure 2. This pyramid approach allows each macro process is related to subordinate sub-processes and then be fully mapped, examined and reengineered. If we consider the world-view of our case, the Porter Model, to be Level 0 Process, then the succeeding process maps correspond to Levels 1, 2, 3 showing sub-processes and detailed activities for each higher-level process in a logical order in Figure 3. Level 3 is then actually studied using the real cases and mapped into a very detailed map of activities with various organizations involved, see Figure 4.

Insert Figure 3 about here Figure 3. Process of Contract Hiring

Process Measurement Indicators

There are many obstacles to allow the processes of higher education to be seen as service providers. Firstly there are too many demands and some universities do not care about dissatisfied customers. Secondly, there is a monopoly in delivering services, both diminish the

Transformation of Higher Education System in a Developing Country, by M. Sepehri, A. Mashayekhi, A. Mozaffar

quality of services. Recent changes in expanding higher education and global competition for the best students and professors will break the monopoly and the solution is to treat the students as customers. However, to assess the Human Resource Management processes of higher education compared with core processes some issues should be considered. The processes lengths are smaller than core processes; demand fluctuations are higher than; human interactions are higher; flexible capacity is required; quality of service is less visible, and requires invigilation of a hierarchy of indicators. All these make the assessment difficult. Our approach to measurement indicators is to concentrate on three factors of cost, time and quality. Appropriate factors or a combination are chosen depend on the processes. For some processes customers are sensitive about time while for others quality is the dominant objective. The following table shows some assessment indicators for the Contract Hiring sub-processes. This table indicates three main categories of indicators including required time for each process, number of steps, and number of internal (with other departments of university) and external (with other organizations) interactions. Also time spent for each process is broken into different segments from two aspects: types (operations, delay, move, and checking) and employees (managerial, technical, clerical and transportation). Figure 4 summarizes some of the temporal indicators for the sub-processes of Contract Hiring as has shown in Figure 3. Insert figure 4 about here Figure 4. Measurement for Application Review The table shows that the process of presentation of Application in University Committee in average takes about 62 days with passing through 15 steps. Operation, checking, delay and motion have happened in this process with 7, 0.7, 0.4 and 98.78 percent of the total elapsed time. According to this figure delays figure out the most time-consuming part of the process. In depth analysis of the figure indicates that setting up the committee is the major source of delays and always there is a large queue of applications waiting for their approval. Investigating the numbers in other columns also indicates that managerial, technical, clerical and transportation percentages are trivial compare to the delays. Finally the last part of the figure indicates that this process has no interaction with the rest of university, the ministry, or other outside organizations. These figure is in direction of two questions: are they providing a quality service, and are they providing it efficiently?

Aligning the Organization:

In a balanced organization, at least three dimension of activities should be aligned and related: Objectives, which is the primary motives and goals of current activities in the organization; Processes, which is the combined set of activities collectively provide output to the customer in support of objectives; and Measurement Criteria, which provide quantitative formula for monitoring the actual performance of processes according to objectives. Other dimensions, such as organization, may also be considered in balancing an organization. Each of these dimensions defined at the top of an organization may be broken down to a lower level of details providing information on sub-systems. Therefore, we may define a Level 0 for a world view, a Level 1 for organization view, a Level 2 for department view, and finally Level 3

Transformation of Higher Education System in a Developing Country, by M. Sepehri, A. Mashayekhi, A. Mozaffar

for unit view. The set of information at each level collectively provide information at a higher level. Therefore, a sub-process is associated with a sub-objective, and is measured by a subcriteria. The sub-objectives, in turn, are related to the higher objective. The challenge for an organization is to coordinate and align the dimensions of its infrastructure horizontally and vertically. That means there must be an integration and a balance between process, objective, and measurement criterion horizontally, as well as systems and sub-systems vertically. This is often not defined or documented, done intuitively and incompletely, and in not updated as changes occur in the system. A unit may reengineer its activities, but be unable to align the new set of activities with lower and higher steps or with corresponding objectives and criteria. We often see in organizations that the objectives have changed, but the processes and measurement criteria have not followed. We also see organizations where sub-processes or subobjectives are not connected to next level objectives and processes. Any local effort to improve the process will not yield substantial results if it is not done with overall system perspective. A methodology and a procedure are needed to define the various dimensions of an organization and to align these dimensions at macro and micro levels.

Figure 5. Hierarchy of Process-Objective-Criteria

1. Overall Approach:
To reengineer the current processes, two general approaches are used, the results of which are then compared and merged into a combined solution. The result may be radically different from the current state. 1- A clean sheet approach, where the current situation and existing processes are ignored. This way a totally new solution is devised assuming no restriction or bias towards the old system. 2- Revising of the current state, where the existing system is examined and questioned in order to find areas for improvement or reengineering. Benchmarking of related cases is used to design a new model or to test the designed one. The proposed solution is finally checked for consistency, efficiency, and effectiveness. Within each approach above, we use the following methods and tests to find areas for further change and improvement: 1. Develop a logical model and its components at the highest level. 2. Examine the necessity of sub-objectives for the objectives at the next higher level. 3. Test sufficiency of sub-objectives for the objectives at the next higher level. 4. Delete, combine, or change the order of sub-objectives at each level.

Transformation of Higher Education System in a Developing Country, by M. Sepehri, A. Mashayekhi, A. Mozaffar

5. Develop the criteria to correspond to objectives at each level. 6. Determine the needed activities to accomplish objectives at each level. 7. Determine the needed resources to accomplish objectives at each level. 8. Determine of best location or organization unit to perform activities. 9. Review various sub-systems for consistency and balance at each level. Prior to such detail work, an overall mission and strategy for the system must be developed. Customer requirements and organization vision are used in shaping the strategy and defining value for the added value of processes. Measurement criteria include factors of expense, speed, and quality for each process.

Proposed Solution:
The Pilot Process of Hiring Academic Faculty was reviewed and discussed with many organizations involved. The problem with the exiting process is that there are too many separate sub-processes done by different organization in a serial way. It takes long and is error-prone. Several steps are deleted, combined, or done in parallel. The aim is to empower one organization, department, to evaluate the candidates and make a decision. At the same time, a review process to assure the quality of the process. Using a Clean Sheet approach, the most straightforward and efficient process was proposed, see Figure 7. The objectives were to shorten the total time, reduce total number of steps, and improve the quality. Sub-objectives were also defined, as processing time, review time, and contract time under total time, and as number of satisfied applicant and number of mistakes and complaints under the quality. Corresponding measurement criteria were also defined. In reviewing activities, several of them were deleted or postponed to a later time. Verification of documents and background check, for example, were put off to be input to the next process of contract renewal. Instead, a signed honor letter by the applicant at this stage speeds up the process. Not every application has to be reviewed by a higher committee. A university committee evaluates only complaints and rejected files.

Transformation of Higher Education System in a Developing Country, by M. Sepehri, A. Mashayekhi, A. Mozaffar

Work in Progress:
The pilot case, in which the contract hiring process for academic faculty was reengineered, has actually generated much interest and excitement among other parts of the system. Therefore, we expect that other groups volunteer to use the methodology in order to review and re-design their operations. The early results from the pilot case have not only proved the feasibility and profitability of this work, but have also set expectations for other organizations to follow. This work has been unique in showing the application of BPR to a large-scale non-for-profit organization, actually for a multi-organization set of processes at national level with numerous customers. It also offers a unique and integrated methodology for looking at both macro and micro processes. The approach searches out and documents the mission, intra-organization interactions, and at least three levels of process hierarchy. It also defines and relates processes, objectives, and measurement criteria at each level. In literature review of BPR, much has been written about the ideas and case applications. However, an overall methodology is not yet emerged. Also, most past work has been on for profit competitive organizations, and not for non-for-profit ones. This study has worked this existing gap. The methodology has already been used in other parts of National Higher Education in Iran, and has been proposed to other government organizations, for example the Ministry of Trade and Economics of Iran. In the immediate future, further details of proposed solution is to be developed and verified, before it is implemented nationwide. Special attention needs to be paid to the cultural-social factors. Users and managers need to support and be convinced of the value of the new processes. Training, both formal and on the job, and work guidelines should be available. Although actual results are not in yet, dramatic improvements are expected. For example, average total time of application to contract for a new faculty is expected to be reduced by at least tenfold.

Transformation of Higher Education System in a Developing Country, by M. Sepehri, A. Mashayekhi, A. Mozaffar

References:
1

Hammer M. and Champy J. (1993) Reengineering the Corporation. New York: Harper Business. Al-Mashari M., Irani Z. and Zahiri M. (2001). Business Process reengineering: a survey of international experience. Business Process Management 7(5): 437-455. Lee Y and Elcan A (1996). Simulation Modeling for Process Reengineering in the Telecommunication Industry. Interfaces 26: 1-9. Giaglis GM Paul RJ and Doukidis GI (1997). Simulation for Intra- and Inter- Organizational Business Process Modeling. Informatica 21: 613-620. D. (1999) Reengineering the University, Communications of ACM, 42(6), pp.93-101. Martin J (1995) The great transition using the seven disciplines of Enterprise engineering to Align people, Technology and Strategy, American Management Association, pp. King WR (1994) Process reengineering: the strategic dimensions, Information Systems Management, 11(2), pp.71-73. Grotevant S (1998) Business Process and Process Redesign in Higher Education: Art or Science? EDUCAUSE conference, pp. Stahlke H (1998) Common Sense, Traditional Structures and Higher Education Reengineering as Fundamental Inquiry, CUMREC conferences, pp. Stahlke H. and J. Nancy (1996) Reengineering Higher Education: Reinventing Teaching and Learning, CAUSE/EFFECT, 19(4), pp. 44-51. Adenso-Diaz B and A Canteli (2001) Business Process Reengineering and University Organization: a normative approach from Spanish case, Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, pp.63-73.

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Transformation of Higher Education System in a Developing Country, by M. Sepehri, A. Mashayekhi, A. Mozaffar

Figure 3. Process of Contract Hiring

Transformation of Higher Education System in a Developing Country, by M. Sepehri, A. Mashayekhi, A. Mozaffar

Figure 4. Measurement for Application Review