The Re-engineering Revolution. Critical Studies of Corporate Change. - Review - book review

Organization Studies, March, 2001 by Finn Borum

David Knights and Hugh Willmott (eds.): The Re-engineering Revolution. Critical Studies of Corporate Change

2000, London: Sage. 196 pages.

This reader is a critical investigation of Business Process Re-engineering (BPR), looking into both its theoretical formulations and how it is practiced. As stated both in the title and in the introduction, the view on BPR is indeed critical, as the reader attempts to create an alternative position to '... the literature dominated by prescriptive consultancy accounts and superficial empirical claims of its success by those with vested interests'. (p 1).

In the introduction, David Knights and Hugh Willmott characterize BPR by three distinctive and central features: (1) from function to process; (2) entrepreneurialism, and (3) information technology. They hardly provide a detached description of the BPR phenomenon. The reader's critical stance is reflected in rather caustic comments on the masculine rhetorics and sales talk of BPR, its promotion of entrepreneurial ideology, and its reliance upon IT as the 'critical enabler' of business re-organization.

BPR is then challenged for resorting to authoritarian leadership and for treating empowerment superficially. BPR is characterized as sharing the naivety of classical management theory concerning organizational politics when dealing with implementation. Its conception of empowerment is described as 'functionalist humanism' belonging to the same category as Taylor and his treatment of leadership. It relies heavily on top-down change management with little degree of involvement, which is inconsistent with its idea of delayering: 'BPR can be interpreted as the latest wave in a series of initiatives developed by owners/managers to increase the cooperation/productivity and adaptability of staff (p.15).

The eight articles in the reader contribute in different ways to investigating the political and ethical foundations of BPR and their implications for the quality of (working) life. Chapters 2, 6 and 9 look closer into the discourse or the rhetorics of BPR. Four chapters look into BPR in practice -- Chapters 4 and 8 by drawing upon case studies, Chapter 7 using data related to labour relations, while Chapter 5 looks into the re-engineering that has been occurring in UK food chains.

Chapter 3 uses bibliometric data to discuss BPR as a fad and, in Chapter 2, Keith Grint and Pete Case argues that BPR can be regarded as resting on some sort of organizational amnesia. Earlier unsuccessful IT investments and their unfulfilled promises of productivity gains must be forgotten. BPR offers collective absolution and promises to deliver the desired productivity improvements. However, besides forgetting the past (failures), BPR also insists that traditional analytical boundaries must be discarded and replaced by all-inclusive maps -- which bears some resemblance to actor-network theory. To 'erase institutional memory' seems to be at the core of BPR and it is made attractive by different rhetorical means, not least among which is the linking of BPR with American traditions.

In Chapter 6, Soren Peter Gunge questions BPR's claim to imply radical transformation. He asks the question of how a change process conducted in an instrumental, top-down, goal-directed fashion can lead to a break with traditional rules of organizing. By drawing in arguments on standardization and control from studies of IT (Heydebrand, Zuboff, Orlikowski) he concludes that BPR as an approach to organizational transformation represents continuity and the translation of bureaucracy into new forms, rather than a break with traditional modes of organization.

Darren McCabe and David Knights (Chapter 4) analyze two aspects of BPR: the shift from functional departments to process teams, and the shift from hierarchy towards a flat, empowered structure. After describing BPR as 'such stuff as dreams are made on' (p. 70), a case study of BPR in a UK bank, where it was applied after a restructuring and functional specialization, reveals discrepancies between the theory and practice of BPR. It is shown how vested interests influence the actual shape of BPR, that hierarchical power is protected, and that the empowerment rhetoric does not lead to less conforming employees. The conclusion is that BPR, as a change technology, 'ignores the economic and political conditions of its own possible applications' (p. 84).

Robin Fincham, in Chapter 9, proposes that regarding BPR as modern magic will facilitate a deeper understanding of its discourse. Magic is a technique of social power and persuasion, and a form of 'primitive' knowledge, a means to control natural and social forces, and '... organizational forces are no less arbitrary and terrifying than the forces of nature' (p. 175).

BPR is analyzed as staging rituals of transition by discarding old identities, going through the pains of transition, being reborn in a new identity. Taboos of the ceremony are: downsizing and outsourcing and the fate

of those whose jobs have been saved. Stylized connections between means and ends are established via magic formulas (success stories). Failure is incorporated into BPR without weakening its message: BPR works, and if the magic formula fails, managers are to blame.