The Reengineering Revolution

Citation

Thommesen, J. (2000), "The Reengineering Revolution", Information Technology & People, Vol. 13 No. 3, pp. 222-228. https://doi.org/10.1108/itp.2000.13.3.222.1

In the wake of a new millenium we are presented with a whole book about business process reengineering (BPR), an outdated management fad that most people can now hardly remember – or are eager to forget. Nevertheless, there may be good reasons to reassess the concept that ran the business world as a plague in the first half of the 1990s, both for its content – if there is one – and as an example of fads and management magic.

In their introduction the editors define business process reengineering as characterised by three key features. These are: the claim that reengineering would move the organization “from function to process”, by replacing functional departments with process teams. The belief in the “free market” and “entrepreneurialism”, notably that everybody should strive to provide the “best” and most profitable customer service. And finally the central role of IT as the critical enabler of the “new organization”, including its potential of empowering human work. The authors then criticize BPR for its mystification of the notion of “empowerment” while actually promoting what Fromm described as the “marketing character”, and for essentially advocating a highly authoritarian form of leadership, especially in managing the reengineering process itself .

Some of the chapters take various approaches that all could be termed as a sort of sociology of knowledge, for instance treating BPR either as amnesia, fashion or magic. In the second chapter, “Now where were we? BPR lotus‐eaters and corporate amnesia”, Keith Grint and Peter Case take on the demand by BPR gurus Hammer and Champy that organisations should forget what they have learned so far and start with a clean slate. The title refers to those of Odysseus’ crew that were invited to eat the flower and then forgot everything else, and the authors make some interesting points in comparing this aspect of BPR to amnesia. They thus find it more suitable to speak of an “arranged amnesia”, as BPR actually borrows selectively from a more distant past of management ideas.

The next chapter by Matthew Jones and Richard Thwaites, “Dedicated followers of fashion: BPR and the public sector”, demonstrates, not surprisingly, that BPR fits the description of a “management fad”. A citation analysis conducted in 1995 confirms that BPR literature fits two aspects of a fad. First, that it has exhibited a period of growth of interest, initially slow but then rapidly increasing, followed by a decline. Second, that typically originates in the private sector, and then, once popular, move into the public sector.

In a later chapter in the book, entitled “Management as magic: reengineering and the search for business salvation”, Robin Fincham suggests that BPR seems to offer a kind of magical transformation. He wishes to acknowledge that what is proposed by the gurus and professionals of a fad is after all a form of knowledge, though very different from scientific method. Magic kicks in when the powerlessness of science is recognized and where the limits of science are reached. And he argues that the magical discourse of management fads has the ideological function of confirming the revolutionary and visionary role of managers in initiating organisational change.

Comparing these contributions, both the concept of magic and the comparison to the lotus‐eaters reveal interesting aspects but seem inadequate in grasping the very modern insistance on newness (real or pretended) and alleged break with “tradition” characterizing both BPR to an extreme degree and fads in general, as noted by Jones and Thwaites.

Indirectly, the chapter on “BPR and TQM: divergence or convergence” contributes to the issue of fads. Here, Mihaela Kelemen, Paul Forrester and John Hassard compare BPR to its predecessor, total quality management, criticized and ridiculed by Hammer and Champy for its hopeless incremental approach. The authors argue that the ideas presented are not that different, but further claim that the differences may not be very important and advocate shifting attention to local and specific organizational circumstances, regarding both BPR and TQM as uncertain and constructed phenomena arising in the contest, political and historical arena in which organizations operate. Drawing on an ethnographic case study, they demonstrate that BPR programmes can in fact build on the foundations and logic of TQM programmes that have either lost momentum or are in need of a new “vision”.

Is this a counterargument to different theories about the content of fads, such as the one suggesting oscillation between normative and rational ideologies? Or does it confirm that it is merely a question of ideology? Taken at face value, their claim seems to negate the whole purpose of the book. If BPR or TQM is merely one random label among others on processes of change, then one fad can hardly have any particular “effect”.

Only two chapters deal more than cursorily with the aspect of information technology (IT). IT thus plays a significant role in the restructuring of the supermarket “system”, as described in an extensive case study written by Jennifer Frances and Elizabeth Garnsey, entitled “Reengineering the food chains: a systems perspective on UK supermarkets and BPR”. In the 1980s, the major supermarket chains established stronger relations with carefully selected food suppliers, and thus replaced internal storage with an IT‐based ordering system, literally issuing new orders as the goods are picked from the shelves. The authors argue that this is actually an example of reengineering of business processes and then point out the unequal relationship between primary producers and the supermarkets, while acknowledging that the consumers to some extent have benefitted from the new system.

In “Business process reengineering and ‘the new organization”’, Søren Gunge criticizes the notion of the liberating role of IT. Seeking more prominent proponents of this view than BPR literature he first takes on the thesis by Heydebrand that IT should liberate human work by absorbing formal rules and procedures, and argues that these will continue to structure work processes, even when embedded in IT. He then criticizes Zuboff for misreading her own case studies that actually reveal the potential subordinating and possibly totalizing effects of the “information panoptican” offered by informating IT systems. His aim is to demonstrate that reengineering is after all a continutation of a trajectory of rationalization begun, but not completed, by bureaucracy.

Thus, Gunge also adresses a subject covered by several other chapters in the book, the effects of BPR on the labor process. In their contribution, “Such stuff as dreams are made on: BPR up against the wall of functionalism, hierarchy and specialization”, Darren McCabe and David Knights question the theoretical claim that BPR will involve moving away from a “functional” layout of sequentially organized “specialized” tasks, where work is controlled through a “hierarchical” command structure. Using a case study in fiscal services they show the persistance of hierarchy and specialization, and how it reemerges even within reengineered teams. They note how the title team leader seeks to obscure the hierarchical power relations within the organization between staff/management. Fundamentally, they question that management actually has the power to empower the workers.

In his chapter, “What about the workers?: BPR, trade unions and the emiseration of labour”, Gregory Gall takes a more tactical approach to reengineering from a union perspective. He argues that BPR is fundamentally antagonistic towards workers’ interests, and discusses how it can be opposed and defeated by unions. He concludes that although attempting to obliterate union influence, management is still dependent on the union as an independent representative of the workers, thus leaving a breach for influence and opposition. This chapter must be the most frustrating in the book: as a tactical analysis it is tied to a moment in history and suffers the most from the whole book’s attempt to deal with a fad soon forgotten.

Serious research can hardly keep the fast pace of the rollercoaster of management discourse. Does this book have any value as more than a historical account? Many of the chapters are written as though still in the heyday of BPR and thus suffer from a futile attempt to address a “current” issue. As with the tactical considerations, the various “critiques of ideology” of BPR as such in the book seem to arrive somewhat late. Nevertheless, the book also has more than historical interest, for a number of reasons.

Thus, several chapters actually address elements of BPR that survive under new guises. The ideas of cross‐functional and even cross‐organizational self‐organizing teams, and of lateral relationships replacing hierarchical channels play a significant role in much literature on virtual organizations and virtual teams. Some even see reengineering as a step towards virtual organizations. Therefore, some of the critique in the book is still relevant, at least as an oppositional perspective on new organizational forms.

Another question that is hinted at by several authors in the book is whether more recent fads are somehow a reaction to BPR. Thus, the hype of the learning organization, and now the focus on knowledge management, could be read as a countermeasure to the rather structuralist approach of BPR: by obliterating old structures, organizational knowledge is eroded, and the very claim to “forget what we have learned” was a direct threat to accumulated experience.

These perspectives more or less make up for the aforementioned “bad timing”, and the book can thus be recommended, especially to readers with interest in labour process and critical management perspectives.