Business Process Reengineering (BPR)

BPR was first introduced to the business world by Frederick Taylor when he published his article The Principles of Scientific Management in the 1900s. Following on from the earlier ideas of Time and Motion Studies pioneered by Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, Scientific Management was the first step to the introduction of BPR which turned out to be unsuccessful due to the many issues which were not resolved[1].Michael Hammer and James Champy introduced their book "Reengineering the Corporation", which gave the birth to the term business process reengineering.

Business Process Reengineering (BPR), also know as Business Process Redesign[2], Core Process Redesign[3], Process Innovation[4], or Business Engineering[5], is a concept within the field of change management. Numerous definitions of BPR are found in the literature. However, all definitions agree that the processes start with the customer and their satisfaction. The most cited definition of a business process is probably Hammer & Champy definition. They defined BPR as "'the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical, contemporary measures of performance such as cost, quality, service and speed..."[6]. They have characterised the tree driving forces behind reengineering as the three Cs, which are Customer, Competition and Change. However, Johansson et al added three more, which are Cost, Technology and Shareholders[7].

Organizations benefit from BPR in three ways: cost savings, time savings, and reductions in defects. The two cornerstones of any organization are the people and the processes. BPR is the key to transforming how people work. What appear to be minor changes in processes can have dramatic effects on cash flow, service delivery and customer satisfaction. The following organizations are an example[8]:
1.Citibank increased profits by over 750 percent by reengineering a credit analysis system.
A reengineering effort at CIGNA RE sped up document processing, even though the number of employees was reduced almost by half.
2.Kodak reduced the time required to develop a camera by more than half. Given the compelling benefits of a successful reengineering effort.
It is not difficult to understand why so many companies are pushing reengineering efforts.

The overriding objective is to achieve a step change in performance. Performance improvement relates to internal efficiency and competitive advantage. Internal efficiency is achieved by examining how we can run the business with fewer hand-offs, barriers, formal communications and less waiting time. Competitive advantage often involves working with the customers on assisting them with their business so that you can both be more effective. BPR has three key target categories[9]:
● Customer Friendly: One of the main goals of introducing BPR is to get a competitive edge and that can only be gained by providing the customers more than what the others in the market are asking for.
● Effectiveness: Whatever product or service the business might be providing to the customer is successful, and then the customers would automatically want to buy that product or service again.
● Efficiency: How efficient is the company that is manufacturing the product before introducing it to the market to minimise costs? This is one of the key categories that are believed to be more important than any others.

There are two approaches to BPR that can be found in the literature. The methodology originally prescribed by Hammer and Champy is a top-down approach[10], which suggests that the BPR team should focus on determining how the strategic objectives of the organization can be met without letting its thinking be constrained by the existing process. The other approach outlined by Harrington is a bottom-up approach which advocates modelling the existing process to gain understanding of it, and then streamlining it appropriately to meet the strategic objectives[11]. The focus is on changing the as-is process by identifying opportunities for improving it. In practice, a BPR team will ordinarily need to adopt a mixed approach. If the top-down methodology is used as the basis, there is still a need to understand the current functionality and to define carefully the transition path from the current to the preferred future process. With a bottom-up methodology, BPR teams can spend too much time on detailing the current process and lose innovative thinking. A mixed approach would encourage the team to consider high-level changes without being cluttered by the details of the current process.


According to Hammer and Champy, BPR is about beginning again with a clean sheet of paper[12]. In other words, that in implementing BPR the history should be ignored and we should concentrate only on the future. However, the ‘past’ must be forgotten but a particular framing of the ‘past’ is to live on in the memory of an infinitely superior reengineered present/future. Furthermore, Hammer and Champy’s prescriptions are replete with such contradictions and as the language of ‘one dimensional thought and behaviour’[13], reengineering ‘closes itself against any other discourse’ and seeks to ‘assimilate all other terms to its own’[14]. Therefore, is it assumed that after the implementation of BPR both corporate and individual identity will be as one and interests will be the same? By looking to the proposition, we will find that the work of Hammer and Champy support the proposition, which based on partially remembering the past to form the present as success. However, McCabe proved in his work that such subjugation is unlikely because employees do not passively imbibe representations of the past/present. The human factor should be taken seriously in consideration to implement a successful BPR. According to McCabe, Memory is to be selectively wiped. The memory of antagonism and inequality is to be rubbed out whilst the memory of inefficiency and inflexibility is to be retained so that the new will seem all the better. Yet the intense disciplinary control over work, large scale redundancies, and temporary and insecure forms of employment, contradict and undermine such a partial memory loss. According to McCabe, these conditions fan the flames of memory just as the reproduction of antagonistic and bureaucratic relations compound the sense in which the past lives on. Therefore, BPR presents a big problem than some managers and gurus seem to assume. This should take us to the proposition that seems to ignore this problem.

According to Knights and Willmott, analysts have generally failed to expose relations of power and domination that underpin the construction and reproduction of what may appear to be a "shared system of norms and values" within work organizations. Whether the focus has been upon the organization as a whole or upon occupational' 'communities" located within it[15], understanding has generally been limited to perceiving corporate cultures as founded upon mutuality and consensus, not upon coercion and compliance. The tendency to overlook (or naturalize) asymmetries of power in organizations has been most transparent among writers who have promoted "culture" as the most recent panacea for the managerially defined problems of commitment and competitiveness. The studies of organizational culture and symbolism might usefully attend to forms of power that categorize or differentiate individuals, mark out their identity (e.g., as managers), and generally subject them to "a law of truth" that those in power recognize and others are obliged to recognize in them[16] . From this perspective culture is as lifeless and mechanical as the concept of reengineering itself – subject to the dictates of clock time, precision and schedules. It reflects a belief that boundaries can be drawn whereby staff will forget the past and even their everyday life experiences. However, people can not forget their past and life experience. Therefore, we should not adopt any thing that incompatible with lived experience in implementing a BPR programme. As proved in McCabe work, within such simplistic prescriptions lie the seeds, if not the bloom, of continuity, diversity and dissent; for culture is a creative living process rather than a programmable destination to be arrived at. According to Knights and Willmott, culture is explored in terms of how it emerges from constant processes of contest and struggle whilst recognizing that ‘unity and division’ may exist ‘in tandem’[17]. The approach rejects an understanding of culture as stasis whereby change is seen as a shift from one discrete end-state to another (i.e. past, present, future)[18]. Of course, gurus and practitioners prefer end-states because they are easier to communicate, extol and understand. Employees, and culture, are not objects that can be switched from one state to another but are continually in process. Davenport offers more pragmatic approach towards BPR as he is stressing that the management should take human ‘enablers’ into account[19]. More recently, Davenport and Stoddard have revised their position and have questioned whether a ‘clean slate’ approach towards reengineering can be adopted[20]. The problem according to them is the cost of designing an entirely new approach. For these gurus, ‘cost’ is the only limitation, what is not in question is whether management is capable of exercising power over others, so as to deliver intended outcomes. Change is seen as the transitory phase between two discrete domains, of a manufactured past and present, but this fails to grasp the interconnectedness of culture as lived experience. Their understanding of time ‘does not live or breathe’ or recognize that people live in such a way that ‘encompasses memories in the present of the past as well as expectations and desires in the present of the future’[21]. Reengineering then, traffics in a mechanical view of the world, where memories can be re-written or replaced like so much water or oil. Therefore, studying the organizational culture is something important to have a proper implementation to any BPR programme. The proposition that we are discussing should take this factor in consideration.

However, the most serious problem in reengineering business processes is resistance to change. Many people will go to great lengths to avoid adapting to new ideas and ways of doing things. Hammer and Champy see poor management and unclear objectives as the main problems to Business Reengineering success. Only just recently they acknowledge people’s resistance as a major obstacle to Business Reengineering`s successful implementation[22]. According to Wellis and Rick, It is argued that management have ‘concentrated on processes’ when introducing BPR and have ‘ignored the people who make them work’[23].The prescriptive reengineering literature is replete with ‘cultural’ messages, however, its approach towards, and understanding of culture, is poorly theorized and inadequately developed.

To summarized, Hammer and Champy supported the proposition, which based on partially remembering the past to form the present as success. However, McCabe proved in his work that such subjugation is unlikely because employees do not passively imbibe representations of the past/present. The human factor was ignored on the work of Hammer and Champy. However, Davenport did offer more pragmatic approach towards BPR as he stressed that the management should take human ‘enablers’ into account. More recently, Davenport and Stoddard have revised their position and have questioned whether a ‘clean slate’ approach towards reengineering can be adopted, which was adopted by Hammer and Champy. This should take us tot that human factor should be taken seriously in consideration to implement a successful BPR. The approach of clean sheet of paper is really questioned because people can not forget their past and life experience. The memory is not just the reproduction of antagonistic and bureaucratic relations compound the sense in which the past lives on. Therefore, BPR presents a big problem than some managers and gurus seem to assume. Also, we have found out that analysts have generally failed to expose relations of power and domination that underpin the construction and reproduction of what may appear to be a "shared system of norms and values" within work organizations. The proposition failed to grasp the interconnectedness of culture as lived experience. We should not adopt any thing that incompatible with lived experience in implementing a BPR programme. The human factor and the studying of organizational culture are something important that should be taken in consideration in the implementation of a BPR programme.
[1] http://www.answers.com/topic/business-process-reengineering
[2] Davenport, T.H. & Short, J.E. (1990). The New Industrial Engineering: Information Technology and Business Process Reengineering. Sloan Management Review, 31(4), Summer, 11- 27.
[3] Kaplan, R.B. & Murdock, L. (1991). Core Process Redesign. The McKinsey Quarterly, 2, 27-43.
[4] Davenport, T.H. (1993). Process Innovation. Harvard Business Press, Boston, MA.
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[6] Hammer, Michael & James Champy (1993), Reengineering the Corporation: A manifesto for business Revolution, Harper Business, New York.
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[11] Harrington, H.J.; Business Process Improvement, McGraw-Hill, USA, 1991
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[18] McCabe, D. (2004) 'A Land of Milk and Honey'? Reengineering the 'Past' and 'Present' in a Call Centre' Journal of Management Studies 41:5,827-856.
[19] Davenport, T. H. (1993). Process Innovation: Reengineering Work through Information Technology. Boston, MA:Harvard Business School Press.
[20] Davenport, T. H. and Stoddard, D. B. (1994). ‘Reengineering: business change of mythic proportions’. MIS Quarterly, June, 121–7.
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[22] Davenport, T.H., 1996. Business Process Reengineering: The Fad that Forgot the People. In: Fastcompany Magazine World Wide Web
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