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Original Articles

Reengineering and organizational change in irizar s. co-op

, &
Pages 135-155 | Published online: 03 Dec 2010
 

Abstract

The management of change is one of the most frequent situations for companies. The keys to success or failure are related to organizational change – managerial tools, organizational structure or leadership and communication. This paper analyses the management of the change made by Irizar. Charismatic leadership and the workers' commitment in the project explain the evolution from financial problems to Business Excellence in 10 years.

Acknowledgements

This research was carried out within the project Process Reengineering in Europe: choices, people and technology (PRECEPT), Targeted socio-economic Research Programme (TSER) European Commission and UE-1998-28 (Departamento de Educación, Universidades e Investigación, Gobierno Vasco).

Notes

1. In 1998, the ISO14001 certification was introduced to complete the Quality Certifications.

2. The process of accepting a worker as a cooperatist member takes three years.

3. In fact, 150 copies of Hammer & Champy's book (Citation1993, translation into Spanish in 1995) were distributed among the staff.

4. Oxman (Citation2002) considers that reengineering has the magic ticket to achieve efficiency improvements. But these improvements cannot be sustainable without valuing Human Capital.

5. The press has picked up on statements that there is no clock in Irizar and that they do not clock in (Egunkaria, 15 March 1998, p. 22. El Correo, 18 March 2001).

6. In 2000, Irizar put a travel programme in to action, thanks to which groups of three to four employees spend a few hours with a customer who has acquired one of their buses.

7. ‘Irizar has squared the circle. It allows itself to play the capitalist market game, it competes, it tries to manufacture more cheaply, to sell more and to make money, with its own classic leftist philosophy’ (El Correo, 18 September 2001, p. 46).

8. Given that this term or the ‘operator’ term seem to want to say that only employees' manual ability is important (El Correo, 18 September, 2001 p. 46).

9. See examples of the extra efforts in Knowledge Cluster (Citation1997, pp. 9 & 18). These extra hours are not paid in Irizar. On the other hand, in the Gara newspaper (11 February 1999) Saratxaga mentions the gesture of keeping young recently contracted workers in the company despite a drop in orders. This cost the company €1.2 million in 1998. We believe that this type of gesture reinforced Saratxaga's credibility as leader.

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