Gatekeepers and Referrals in Services
Management Science
Division of Labor in Medical Office Practices
Manufacturing & Service Operations Management
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We analyze the competitive and economic implications ofinformation system design, allocation of decision rights,and task bundling during business process reengineering.The popular reengineering literature advocates employeeempowerment - decentralizing decision authority andconsolidating tasks - as complementary processredesign strategies. Our analysis reveals, however thatdecentralization and consolidation decisions can occurseparately, or together; the optimal combination dependson the relative effectiveness of the technology aimed atskill enhancement and the sensitivity of customers todelivery time and quality. We identify those processparameters that can cause decentralization andconsolidation to have opposite effects on processperformance; we also point at other parameters such ascustomer to customer variability which can cause them tocomplement one another. Finally, we explain why in atime-based competitive marketplace ,firms are morelikely to centralize their decision making whileconcentrating their information technology investmentson enhancing productivity and intra-organizationalcommunications.