The agility of the business process improvement in a UK luxury car manufacturing context

Liu, X

Abstract

Agility, a modem management concept, is the ability to thrive and prosper in a
continuous changing and competitive environment. Currently, agile theories are still
very much general and mainly covering manufacturing. Business processes that are
focusing on the administrative and supporting processes, are said to be the heart of any
enterprise and the major cost factor in most companies. Therefore, improving business
processes is becoming a major competitive weapon in the 21 st century. In an attempt to
link agility and business processes within a real business environment, this research was
designed to identify the factors that affect the development of agility in the business
process improvement (BPI) in a UK luxury car manufacturing context.
A theoretical agile BPI framework was developed to guide the author through the
research from an extensive literature review on the existing agile and BPI theories to
help identify the major agile constructs and BPI methodology and their
interrelationships. The case study was undertaken in a UK luxury car manufacturer
during 2005, and the data were collected and triangulated through document and archive
checking, non-participated observation and mainly 35 semi-structured interviews with
people from different business processes in the case study company.
The results suggest that the existing agile theories need to be further strengthened in the
areas of communication, motivation, the scope of empowerment, people's training and
development and the flattening of management structure which are the major factors
limiting the development of agility in this unique business environment. These unique
findings have made a major contribution to the study of agility by identifying the
barriers of agility within the business processes in a UK luxury car-manufacturing
context. Based on that, the unique agile BPI framework was further modified to
demonstrate the inter-relationships between agility and BPI for further academic studies
or industrial practices.

Citation

Liu, X. The agility of the business process improvement in a UK luxury car manufacturing context. (Thesis). Salford : University of Salford

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Oct 3, 2012
• Award Date: Jan 1, 2006