Change management at Mobil Oil Australia

Abstract

To remain competitive many businesses in the 1990's have undertaken business process reengineering projects reorganising one or more parts of their operations. This paper results from a case study of the enterprise-wide review of Mobil Oil Australia Limited to increase profitability and change the culture of the organisation. A radical (to the Oil Industry) business unit organisation structure was designed, populated and implemented. The project was an immediate financial success and reenergized the company. Income after tax was six times higher after the reorganisation than in the previous year notwithstanding a continuing recession and the uncertainty caused by the restructuring. Return on capital employed increased from 2% to 7%. Lessons can be learnt from the way the project was initiated and developed, the deployment of the project management structure and improvement methodology, the approach to the implementation of the new structure and the findings of the post implementation review.

Which capabilities matter for successful business process change?

“…However, whenever BPR is carried out successfully, dramatic improvements in critical efficiency and effectiveness measures such as cost, quality, service and time can be achieved (Sharafi et al, 2011;Jurisch et al, 2012a). For instance, the reengineering of Mobil Oil Australia resulted in reduced costs and increased customer orientation (Martin and Cheung, 2002). Huq and Martin (2006) reported improved information sharing, increased efficiency and higher employee motivation as the benefits of an IT-driven approach to BPR implementation.…”

Measuring Process Effectiveness Using Cpm/Pert

“…Oakland and Tanner (2006) identified project management as one of the successful business change strategies. This is also supported by Martin and Cheung, Y (2002) and Smith (2003).…”

Emergent risks in business process change projects

“…The Western Provident Association believed that change must be driven top-down and noticed that top management sponsorship "ensured that the major changes in the organization were pushed through at each stage of the project" (Harvey, 1994). Similar experiences were established at CIGNA Corporation (Caron et al, 1994) and Mobil Oil Australia, where the visible top management commitment was seen as key to the achievement of the radical changes (Martin and Cheung, 2002). Considering the high variance in the project performance between a lack of support and high top management support, we hypothesize: H4.…”