IMPLEMENTING BUSINESS PROCESS REENGINEERING (BPR) IN GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATION.

Government organizations can use Business Process Reengineering (BPR) to enhance their performances in terms of reducing processes’ cost and cycle time, increasing service quality, and increasing customers and employees satisfaction. However, the implementation phase of BPR pointed as the most challenging. Thus this study tried to study the factors that leads to delay BPR implementation in government organization case of Afar region sector bureaus, Ethiopia. In this research, concurrent triangulation strategy of mixed method research design adopted. Survey, interviews and document review strategy of inquiry have been used. Totally 160 respondents taken as respondents for the survey. The interviews have been made with individuals who have served as design team members of the region. The document review is made by acquiring BPR project reports from the region. Results of the study showed that the region used BPR to reduce the processes cycle time and cost, to increase service quality, customers’ satisfaction, and employees’ satisfaction. However, the region faced challenges to implement the redesigned processes. The factors impended to successfully implement BPR in the region categorized as top management support factors, change management factors, organizational factors, BPR project management factors, information

Government organizations can use Business Process Reengineering (BPR) to enhance their performances in terms of reducing processes' cost and cycle time, increasing service quality, and increasing customers and employees satisfaction. However, the implementation phase of BPR pointed as the most challenging. Thus this study tried to study the factors that leads to delay BPR implementation in government organization case of Afar region sector bureaus, Ethiopia. In this research, concurrent triangulation strategy of mixed method research design adopted. Survey, interviews and document review strategy of inquiry have been used. Totally 160 respondents taken as respondents for the survey. The interviews have been made with individuals who have served as design team members of the region. The document review is made by acquiring BPR project reports from the region. Results of the study showed that the region used BPR to reduce the processes cycle time and cost, to increase service quality, customers' satisfaction, and employees' satisfaction. However, the region faced challenges to implement the redesigned processes. The factors impended to successfully implement BPR in the region categorized as top management support factors, change management factors, organizational factors, BPR project management factors, information technology factors (IT) and country related factors. In general, this study suggests to take corrective measures before the project entirely fail.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………….... Introduction:-
Most of governmental organizations characterized with inflexible structures. As Reyes (2001) noted, multiple layers of management structure, centralized and extensive systems as well as the accumulation of control procedures and regulations remain to be difficult obstacles in ensuring efficiency, economy and productivity of public sector organizations. Likewise, the working practices of Ethiopian public organizations pointed as fragmented functions across various units of the organization and each unit focused only on one task that lack to enhance the performances. That in turn results to dissatisfy both the customers and service providers. Above all, those oldfashioned working practices lack to enhance the organization performance in terms of effective, efficient and economic utilization of resources.
Recognizing the benefits of BPR that brings to the organizations, the government of Ethiopia also introduced BPR to enhance and transform the public organization. As a result, the former Ethiopian Ministry of Capacity Building order and coordinated almost all public organization to redesign and implement new ways of doing businesses in the organization.
Afar region is one of the state in Ethiopia which is located in the North-Eastern part. In the region there are various governmental sector bureaus that provide services to the communities (customers). However, like the other government organizations found in Ethiopia, the sector bureaus of Afar region way of doing businesses and services criticized being as old-fashioned that are scattered in pieces of tasks among various unites of the organizations. Thus, under the delegation of the Ministry of Capacity Building, Afar regional sector bureaus have been engaged in BPR project in 2009.
To carry out BPR project in the region, under the supervision and coordination of Capacity Building Bureau of Afar region, various processes of different bureaus have been studied. In doing so, redesign team members have been assigned to study various processes. Eventually, the teams finished the redesign phase of BPR at the end of 2009. However, the region has not yet entirely implemented the redesigned processes and it can be said that the region failed to implement. In connection with this, Debela and Hagos (2011) noted that BPR implementation in Ethiopian public organizations accompanied by doubt, skepticism, and fear of losing the status quo. As Habib (2013) concluded, bringing change into an organization is very difficult and very much demanding. BPR by itself is also bringing new ways of doing business by totally abandoning the existing working conditions. Studies on key success and failure factors of BPR implementation attempted to identify different sets of factors (Grover et al., 1995;Attaran and Wood, 1999;Allen and Fifield, 1999; Al-Mashari and Zairi, 1999;Habib, 2013;Bibi & Hassan, 2014). These factors include change management, management competency and support, organizational culture, project planning and management, information technology (IT) infrastructure and financial resources. Besides, within these sets of factors there are various specific success and failure factors. The factors identified by various authors are almost similar. Therefore, this study attempted to identify the factors that affect BPR implementation in government organizations case of case of Afar region sector bureaus, Ethiopia, that can be used to draw attention where corrective actions to be taken.

Literature Review
BPR is used by organizations to respond to the ever changing environment. BPR is about beginning a new from scratch, i.e., starting over entirely by considering how activities in the organization put together. Thus, it entails the fundamental and radical redesign of the old/traditional business processes for the pursuit of new direction and perspective of the organization.
The term 'Business Process Reengineering' was first introduced by Hammer (1990) and Davenport and Short (1990), and it becomes successful and popular management tool for the past three decades (O'Neill and Sohal, 1999). In connection with its introduction, Tanoglu (2004) indicated that during the beginning of 1990s, with globalization and extraordinary pace of development in the information technology (IT) area, three driving forces (customers, competition and change) resulted BPR.
Even though the usage of BPR increasing rapidly, implementing the newly redesigned processes are far from straightforward activities. As Nicholds and Mo (2015) in BPR projects, setting improvement targets in BPR too high without considering the company's capability and its external and internal interactions will have little chance of achieving the set targets, which means project failure. Supporting this Attaran and Wood (1999) indicated that BPR 111 as still an unfulfilled promise for many organizations despite all the energy, money and efforts spent by organizations trying to make their BPR efforts successful.

Factors of BPR implementation
Implementing BPR projects is very complicated and several factors must be taken in to consideration for its success. Hence, there are different success factors which may improve the implementations of BPR. In line with this, Cheng and Chiu (2008) found that management commitment, communication of change, customer focus and use of IT are the critical success factor of implementing BPR. Similarly, Herzog et al (2005) mentioned the critical success factors of BPR implementation as top management commitment, education and training, team work, project management of BPR, employee cooperation, information technology support and levers and results.
On the other hand, there are different failure factors which may influence the implementations of BPR and is considered as a negative readiness indicator. Herzog et al (2005) found out the failure factors of BPR implementation as middle management fear of losing authority, employees' fear of losing job, skepticism about project result and feeling uncomfortable with new working environment. Furthermore, Sharifi & Nazemi (2006) mentioned the failure factors of BPR implementation as communication problem, organizational resistance, defect in preparation for change, problems of creating a culture of change, defect in education and training, problems relevant to commitment, support and leadership and ineffective BPR team.
Attaran and Wood's (1999) article identified five primary obstacles to more effective BPR implementation. That are misunderstanding of the concept, misapplication of the term, lack of proper strategy, management failure to change, and failing to recognize the importance of people. Underscoring the five primary obstacles of Attaran and Wood (1999) is appropriate. Such as BPR is not downsizing, automation, restructuring, or more of the same. It is dramatic revising of the organization's process and changing the way in which work is carried out. BPR requires creative thinking and new perspective on the part of management, and top management must change their ways of thinking and develop new skills. Employees play an important role in the success of BPR. Hence, employees fear about job displacement due to redesigned process and coping with their resistance needs to be alleviated. Thus, without an effective approach to deal with employees' resistance, BPR implementation is certain to fail.
Attaran's (2000) article advanced the above-discussed five primary obstacles to eight. The author also clarified the difference between success and failure as not depend on the company size or resources, but on appropriate planning and avoidance of pitfalls. The additional three primary obstacles are 'lack of flexibility' in terms of existing rigid infrastructure of the organization; 'lack of organizational communication' to loop feedbacks for employees to air their concerns; and 'failure to test the process' to understand the impact of any process change. At the end, Attaran (2000) concluded that organization's often fail to achieve BPR objectives because trivializing the concept and ignoring the pitfalls result dangers that makes BPR effort just another short-lived improvement.
On top of the above mentioned, Al-Mashari and Zairi (1999) recognized implementation of BPR as complex and needs to be checked against several success and failure factors to ensure successful implementation by avoiding implementation pitfalls. In their review of both soft and hard factors that cause success and failure of BPR effort, they had identified five categories, namely change-management and culture, management competency and support, organizational structure, project planning and management, and IT infrastructure.
Even though the introduction of BPR is a recent phenomenon in Ethiopia, many public organizations have been engaged in BPR project to radically and dramatically change their business process. However, most of the organizations not attained the intended objectives of BPR. Concerning this, various researchers undertaken studies on BPR a case of Ethiopian public organizations (Debela, 2009;Debela and Hagos, 2011;Mengesha and Common, 2007;Naod, 2011). These studies also showed that the pace variation in the implementation of BPR and the difficulties to implement the redesigned processes.
In spite of the increased use of BPR in various organization resulted enhanced performance, not all organization realized the promises of BPR. This is also the case for Ethiopian public organizations. Thus studding the implementation factors of BPR in the case of Afar regional sector bureaus is worthy for various stakeholders.

Research design
To get a brief understanding of the research problem and to benefit from the method adopted, mixed method of concurrent triangulation strategy was used. This strategy characterized by the collection of both quantitative and qualitative data concurrently (Creswell 2009, pp.213). To identify various factors that affect BPR implementation, the study employed survey strategy (cross sectional). Accordingly, to have representative respondents for the study, eight Woredas (i.e., sub districts) have been selected purposefully from the region, namely, Asaita, Chifra, Dubti, Semera, Awash Fentale, Amibara, Ab'ala and Berehale. From each Wereda twenty respondents have been selected from various governmental bureaus as survey respondents. Totally 160 respondents have been taken as respondents for the survey instrument with non-response of 7 individuals.
In addition, for a better understanding of the issues involved in the study, face-to-face interviews has been held with officials who have deep understanding of BPR implementation in Afar regional sector bureaus. In respect of interviewees' character, interview questions have been prepared prior to conducting the interviews, while emerging questions also forwarded during the interview. In addition, before conducting the interview, respondent's willingness has been asked first. After getting the willingness and schedules, the researchers have conduct the interview using interview protocols.
Then, documents that deal about BPR in Afar region and Ethiopian case in general, have been identified and used. The purpose of adopting this approach was to gain wider aspects about the implementation of BPR in Afar region that cannot otherwise achieved by using the above two inquiry strategies. Specifically, the review of documents includes reports and other published and unpublished records.
Data obtained from the survey instrument have been analyzed using quantitative data techniques. To analyze data obtained from the survey instrument, descriptive statistics have been used, such as frequency, percentage, mean, and standard deviation. In order to give a clear view of the finding, tables and graphs have been used. On the other hand, qualitative data obtained from the interview has been noticed in to appropriate contexts and thematically analyzed.

Results and analysis:-BPR in Afar regional sector bureaus
The uses of BPR in Afar regional sector bureaus dated back to in 2009 by arranging about 370 design team members. These team members have redesigned 74 business processes for the region as a whole. Of these business processes 68 of them have been core processes 1 and remaining (6) have been support processes 2 . Thus there were 74 redesign teams to study and redesign the business processes of the region.
As BPR principles and practices stated, before fully implementing the redesigned processes, some selected processes must have to be piloted and tested. This enables the organizations to take some amendments and changes to redesigned processes. However, implementing all processes at time or entirely could have immense drawback to the organization's progresses. On the other hand, delaying the implementation processes shown as the lack of commitment by the organization to use the redesigned processes. The estimate of Hammer and Champy (1993) showed that about 50 to 70% of BPR projects fail to achieve dramatic results that the organizations intended to achieve.
A document 3 collected from the region showed that of the 74 redesigned processes only 20 of them have been piloted and tested. However, the remaining processes have not been yet piloted or tested. This indicates that only 27 present of the redesigned processes have been piloted. Thus, to measure the progress of BPR implementation in Afar regional sector bureaus, respondents were asked in the survey instrument to rate the perceived level of redesigned processes implemented in their respected bureaus. Based on 153 respondents, the extent of BPR implementation in different sector bureau is presented as follows: 113 Out of 153 respondents, 30 respondents perceived that only 0-10% of the redesigned processes implemented. On the other hand, about 50 respondents agreed that between the range of 41-60% of the redesigned processes implemented. Similarly, about 5 respondents believed that the regional sector bureaus are implementing 90-100% of the newly redesign process. This small number of respondents shows that the newly redesigned process is simply used for the purpose of publicity. From this one can perceived that the sector bureau's motivation in using the newly redesigned project is less. This indicates that, the effective procedures which is required in the implementation of BPR projects needs strong encouragement with active participation.
Thus, the newly redesigned process is not effectively implemented. Because more than half of the respondents believed less than 50% implementation of the redesigned process. Consequently, the regional sector bureaus cannot achieve dramatic performance improvements using BPR unless the sector bureaus radically and fundamentally changed business processes.
In order to identify the period required to implement the redesigned processes at the regional sector bureaus, the survey instrument attempted to capture this issue. The responses are summarized in the following  Table 4.1 presented, of the 153 respondents, 36.5 percent and 24.2 percent of respondents believed that one-totwo years and less than a year required to implement the entire redesigned processes, respectively. For the periods that cover between three to four years and more than five years, 17 percent and 22.2 percent respondents considered the sector bureaus to implement the entire redesigned processes in these periods, respectively. Generally, 60.8 percent of respondents believed that the sector bureaus to implement the redesigned processes within two years, while 39.2 percent of respondents believed the implementation to take more than three years.

BPR implementation cost and benefits
As Linden (1998) indicated, implementing BPR has benefits as well as cost to the implementing organization and the customers. The main cost arising from implementing BPR is the resources incurred in redesigning the processes and acquisition cost of various types of infrastructural or equipment for the new processes. On the other hand, the benefits when the redesigned processes implemented are cost reduction, process cycle time reduction, increasing service quality, and increasing customers and employees' satisfaction of the new process.
Data gathered through the survey instrument helped to highlight the sector bureaus' BPR project cost and benefits. To identify whether BPR project of the sector bureaus cost a lot or not, respondents were asked to rate a five-point Likert scale ('strongly agree' to 'strongly disagree') items. In addition, to identify the benefits of BPR projects, respondents were also asked to rate the expected benefits (cost reduction, process cycle time reduction, increasing service quality, and increasing customers and employees' satisfaction) of redesigned processes when implemented. As shown below in Table 4.2, of the 153 respondents, about 57 percent of respondents agreed that the cost of BPR project as high. On the other hand, a few numbers of respondents couldn't believe as the high amount of cost is incurred for the project of BPR.
As one can understand from the result of the respondents (mean of 2.33 i.e. strongly agree and agree), BPR project implementation needs huge resources even if it is believed to bring dramatic changes for the effectiveness of the regional sector bureaus. In line with this result, the interviewee also commented that the region has incurred huge amount of cost for the BPR project.  Table 4. 3:-Expected benefits of BPR However, Regional Pilot Testing Report (2011) mentioned that the intended objectives of BPR project have not been achieved in terms of quality and cost reduction during the pilot study phase, instead more focus have been show in reducing the cycle time required in processes. In general, a lot of cost incurred for BPR project with anticipation of improve performance when redesigned processes implemented.

BPR implementation challenging factors
Organizations applied BPR to scale up their performance by changing business processes radically and fundamentally, however, its implementation phase is the most challenging issue. To identify the challenging factors of BPR implementation in the case of Afar regional sector bureaus, attempts have been made to find out the factors based on six main categories (i.e. top management support factors, change management factors, organizational factors, BPR project management factors, information technology factors (IT) and country related factors). In the survey instrument, totally twenty-four variables included within these six main categories and most of them taken from the study of Al-Mashari and Zairi, 1999. In order to identify the most challenging factor of BPR implementation, researchers like Grover et al. (1995) has attempted to rank the challenging factors based on their relative severity. Thus based on the method used by Grover et al. (1995) in this study twenty-four factors that impend BPR implementation have been ranked based on their rank. As it is shown on Table 4.4, lack of necessary resources required to implement BPR, lack of total involvements of top management who have real power to change and Employees and customers not openly and actively involved and consulted at all stages of BPR are taken as the leading top 3 challenging factors of BPR implementation at the sector bureaus, which constitute 79.1 percent, 78.4 percent and 77.80 percent agreement, 115 respectively. In addition, the categories of organizational factors, top management support factors, BPR project management factors, and IT factors also considered in the top five challenging factors.
On the other hand, respondents showed same degree of agreement to some factors as the challenging factor to implement BPR. The least rated category of challenging factor is country related. In other word, about more than 41 percent of disagreements have been rated by the respondents for this category to delay the implementation of BPR in Afar regional sector bureaus.

Rank* Category** Challenging Factors
Percent*** The percentage of respondents who were either strongly agreed or agreed with the item as challenging factor of BPR implementation. Table 4

.4:-BPR implementation challenging factors relative severity
The various challenging factors which is presented on the above suggests that BPR implementation at the sector bureaus were constrained by various challenging factors. As Table 3.4 shows, among the twenty-four challenging factors, 18 of them were rated by more than 50 percent of respondents as the most challenging factors. This implies that the benefits expected from BPR were not adequately realized due to these 18 challenging factors.

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In order to get deep understanding of the challenging factors that impeded BPR implementation in Afar regional sector bureaus, here under attempt has been made to analyze each categories of the factors.

Top management support factors
Several authors believe that top management support is required for successful implementation, otherwise implementing the redesigned processes could be a challenging task. As it is shown on the above table, the mean values of each challenging factors showed a higher degree of agreement with the four challenging factors as a negative impact to implement BPR in the region. In other words, all items' mean values are below three and this indicates that most of respondents either strongly agreed or agreed with the items. Specifically, lack of total involvements of top management who have real power to change (mean of 1.95) is the leading top management support factors when it is compared with other factors.
Even though, all items are considered as influential factors in the implementations of BPR, the respondents agreed that top management's insufficient understanding about BPR projects is the least factor which affect the implementations of BPR when it is compared with other factors. This implying that most of the top management who are working at the sector bureaus of Afar have a better understanding of BPR principles and concepts. However, they do not give better concern for the implementation of the redesigned processes. Result from the interview also confirm that lack of top management commitment and supported resulted to delay the implementation of BPR in the region. In addition, the interviewee agreed that lack of political commitment by the management body of the region caused the implementation to delay. As the interviewee stated: 'The highest officials of the region must have to support and commit their time to implement the redesigned processes, otherwise it is not possible to implement BPR by the lower level officials. Which means the higher official could provide resources required to the implementation processes. Thus, without top management willingness for the project, implementing BPR could be unlikely.' Generally, top management's total support and commitment, sufficient understanding of BPR concepts, and changing the values and beliefs can help to implement BPR successfully. Otherwise, the existence of such problems threaten the implementation phase.

Change-management factors
The main concept of BPR is to radically change the processes of organization. In this regard BPR considered as a change project that needs to be managed appropriately in order to enhance its implementation. Supporting this, Debela and Hagos (2011) indicated that adequate and prompt management of BPR initiative is the main success factor to implement BPR. Therefore, BPR requires adequate management, creating a culture of change and new values, and developing policies and strategies for new processes. In line with this, Table 4.6 shows the five types of factors which are related to change management.

Factors
Mean Std. Deviation Fears about political, economic, and organizational risks due to change initiative of BPR From the above table, the mean values are below 3, which indicate that the respondents are agreed on the impacts of all change management factors in the implementations of BPR projects in the sector bureaus. The degree of agreement by the respondents in the case of absence of incentive, training and education to cultivate required values of redesigned processes is high compare to the rest factors. In another study, this factor is also pointed as challenging factor to implement BPR in Ethiopian public organizations (Mengesha and Common, 2007). On the other hand, fears about political, economic, and organizational risks due to change initiative of BPR factor has a relatively low impact when compared with other factors.
As Mathew et al. (2014) indicated, employees show resistance for any types of change initiatives in the organizations. In connection with employees' resistance, the result of interviews shown much emphasis on this factor. During the pilot test phase of BPR implementation the resistance of employees manifested at various sector bureaus. Generally, taking in to consideration about the varies factors of change management is important for the success of BPR implementation.

Organizational factors
The study of Wu and Du (2010) indicated that organizations to identify the necessity of BPR before they undertake the project. This will help the organization to assume the felt needs of using BPR to radically change their processes. Thus, BPR initiative should not be forced or order from the higher level administrators. In connection with this, the following  As shown on the above table, the mean values are below 2.33 for all organizational factors. This indicates that the existence of agreement between respondents about the impacts of all factors. However, the degree of agreement between the respondents is varies from factor to factor. For instance, lack of necessary resources required to implement BPR could be taken as the leading factor of BPR implementation as it is expressed by the majority agreement with the mean value of 2.01. This is true especially for poor and developing countries, like Ethiopia, where resources are limited. In addition, lack of organizational readiness has been shown during the redesign process of BPR which implies that the initiative is not the felt need of organizations.
In contrast to this, rigid hierarchical structures, jobs definition, and responsibility allocation got less attention by the respondents as a factor for BPR implementation when it is compared with other organizational factors. This factor signifying that BPR is about bringing new things and abandoning the existing ways of doing businesses (Habib, 2013).

BPR project management factors
In order to implement BPR successfully efficient and effective organizational communication must have to be done during the various phases of BPR project. Supporting this Al-Mashari and Zairi (1999) noted that organizations to enhance their communication channels during the redesign phase and implementation phase. The communization could be about the progress of the project with stakeholders. Regarding to this, the following Most of the respondents considered all factors as impeding factors of BPR implementation. However, the degrees of agreement among the respondents in the case of extremely redesigned processes and ineffectively redesigned processes indicate that the processes as appropriately redesigned during the BPR project undertaken. On the other hand, with respect to the factor of ineffective redesign team members and employees and customers not openly and actively involved and consulted at all stages of BPR could be accounted to the fact that most of the sector bureaus lack experienced employees and that resulted to have ineffective team members.
As the interview results disclosed, the redesign team members have been assigned by each bureaus of the region based on friendly matters, not on merit or the knowledge and skills of the individuals. In addition, during the redesign phase, the progresses have not been communicated and feedback have not been gathered from the employees and customers of the bureaus. Instead there were some irregular presentation made for the high officials. Thus, these two factors in return substantially affected at the implementation phase.

IT factors
As Hammer and Champy (1993) indicated, IT should be treated as enabler for the redesigned processes. Extremely relying on IT usage for the redesign processes is not allowed in BPR principles, instead the way of doing processes must have to be substantially changed. However, there is misunderstanding in most BPR initiatives that giving much emphasis for IT in the redesign processes. Changing the old business processes with IT is not BPR, it is automation. In line with this, the  Table 4.9 presented, the respondents showed a higher degree of agreement with IT factors. These three factors also accounted to delay the implementation of BPR, because most of the redesigned processes relied on IT. If the redesigned processes considered substantial IT usage, the region must have to invest and acquire IT infrastructure and give trainings to employees who will be assigned in the actual work place, otherwise, the new processes will not be implemented.
As such, lack of IT infrastructure investment and problems related to training provision about IT use in the redesigned processes perceived by respondents. Confirming this, the interviewee suggests that lack of IT infrastructure and using IT technologies have been the main challenges to implement BPR.

Country factors
Country related factors are the last and to some extent the least challenging factors in the implementations of BPR projects in the current study. It is obviously known that the sector bureaus are accountable and responsible to operate under various rules and regulations that govern public organization in Ethiopia. Relating to this, various problems could originate to implement BPR, because in BPR principles existing rules and procedures should be neglected during the process 119 redesign phase. This in turn result to delay the implementation of BPR unless and otherwise the country's rules and regulations amended to fit the redesigned process.
However, most of respondents are neutral about the country related factor to delay the implementation of BPR in Afar sector bureaus (see Table 3.10). Thus the factors which are indicated in the other categories are the main problematic factors that lead to delay BPR implementation in Afar sector bureaus. However, the document review showed to implement BPR the new processes required the existing proclamations, regulations, rules and directives officially to be amended.
Result from the interviewee showed that implementing reform tools or techniques in Ethiopian organization accompanied with doubts. This is due to lack of awareness about the benefits of the reform tools and techniques. In addition, misconception about various tools of reform leads to delay their implementation. For instance, employees of the organizations consider Balanced Score Card (BSC) and BPR as the same. This is resulted from lack of awareness and creating new values and beliefs required by the new system.

Conclusions:-
The regional sector bureaus of Afar tried to use BPR in order to enhance their performances. Implementing the redesigned processes at the sector bureaus could enhance the performances in terms of reducing processes' cycle time and cost, increasing services quality, and increasing customers' and employees' satisfaction. However Afar sector bureaus could not able to realize the intended benefits of BPR due to various factors.
The main factors categorized under the sets of top management support factors, change management factors, organizational factors, BPR project management factors, information technology factors and country related factors. Top management support factors affected BPR implementation with respect to lack of leadership, commitment and support by senior management, top management's insufficient understanding about BPR, top management fears to support the new values and beliefs required by the redesigned processes and lack of total involvements of top management who have real power to change. Similarly, change management factors also contribute its negative impact on the implementations of BPR due to fears about political, economic, and organizational risks due to change initiative of BPR, lack of creating organizational culture and values for change, employees' resistance to change, lack of necessary changes in human resource policies for BPR implementation and absence of incentive, training and education to cultivate required values of redesigned processes.
The finding also confirmed that organizational factors weakened BPR implementations with respect to lack of organizational readiness to change prior to BPR project start, lack of necessary resources required to implement BPR, BPR project initiatives not caused by the felt needs of change and problems related to rigid hierarchical structures, jobs definition, and responsibility allocation. Furthermore, BPR project factors delayed BPR implementation through factors like employees and customers not openly and actively involved and consulted at all stages of BPR, processes extremely redesigned, processes ineffectively redesigned and ineffective redesign team members. Lastly, two sets of factors, i.e., IT and country related factors also affected the implementations of BPR. Broadly, top management support and IT factors were considered as the leading factor in the implementation of BPR project whereas country related factors were not assured by the majorities of the respondents as a constraint for BPR project implementation. Specifically, lack of necessary resources required to implement BPR and lack of total involvements of top management who have real power to change were highly believed by the respondents of the study as a primary factor for BPR project implementation unlike the existing proclamations, regulations, rules and directives of the country delayed BPR implementation.
These factors highlighted to take some correcting actions before the entire BPR project failed. Thus, the following points suggested to ensure successful BPR implementation in Afar sector bureaus: the region must have to create new beliefs and values in the organizations that could meet the requirements of the newly redesigned processes; reward and compensation mechanisms must have to be provided for the employees; officials of Afar sector bureaus must have to demonstrate active interest, commitment and support to implement BPR; organizational structures of organizations should be flattened; allocating the required resources in terms of financial, infrastructural, and human; the region must have to amend and get amendment to the various rules and regulations at the regional state and federal level; much emphasis must have to be given at Zones and Woreda levels to implement the redesigned processes through support, controlling and evaluations. Generally, by avoiding such types of will help the region to realize the benefits of BPR project.