Victoria Akpa

Continuous cost management is considered vital for the sustainability of any business enterprise in modern society. Over the years, the Nigerian airline industry has been experiencing rising operational costs, probably due to inadequate business process reengineering. Based on the assumptions of the value chain model, this article investigates the effect of business process reengineering on operational costs of selected indigenous airline companies in Nigeria. The descriptive survey research design was adopted for the study. The population was 1,938 employees of key professional departments of the selected Nigerian indigenous airline companies. The sample size was 699 staff of the selected departments with 84% response rate. The copies of the questionnaire were administered using trained research assistants. The study adopted a mixed sampling method. Proportionate sampling was used to determine the sample size for each of the three airlines; stratified sampling was used to select the specific units within the organization, while random sampling was used to select the respondents. The data collected were analyzed using descriptive and simple linear regression methods. The descriptive analysis revealed that the overall average and standard deviation for business process reengineering were 2.80 and 0.57, while operational costs were 4.29 and 0.54 respectively. The inferential result showed a positive and significant effect of the business process reengineering on operational costs (R² = 0.024, β = 0.147, t = 3.709, p < 0.05). Thus, the study concluded that business process reengineering affects the operational costs of the selected indigenous airline companies in Nigeria.

Acknowledgment
The researchers acknowledge the contributions of the anonymous reviewers for the useful comments in making the article better. We acknowledge the management of the University that made it mandatory for the supervisee to publish two articles from their thesis, one in the name of the supervisor as the lead author while another in the name of the supervisee as the lead author. The research assistants are acknowledged for the cooperation during the field work and the management of the airlines for allowing the research in their various organizations.