Re‐engineering at Work (2nd ed.)

Citation

Beretta, S. (1998), "Re‐engineering at Work (2nd ed.)", Business Process Management Journal, Vol. 4 No. 2, pp. 168-170. https://doi.org/10.1108/bpmj.1998.4.2.168.1

Throughout the 1990s managerial literature has devoted great attention to process reengineering.

The hundreds of articles and books that have been published show the attention that management has given to this new way of conceiving the art of management as the capability of instilling the idea of change into the organisations that had been designed to remain stable and unchanged while dealing with the ever changing competition.

As any of us would probably expect the first contributions on this largely new topic have been basic in contents and provocative in style. Their main aim was to make people in companies at higher levels aware of the necessity of following this new managerial credo.

Successful slogans such as “Don’t automate, obliterate” (Hammer, 1990) have led to a widespread movement, which has significantly affected the development of management in this decade.

Then, as it often happens with management, the fashion or fit question is raised by someone. On the one hand, slogans and anecdotes are substituted by more sophisticated conceptualisations and models that show the real complexity of the problem. On the other hand, empirical studies illustrate the results obtained and the problems faced by the companies that have experienced reengineering.

It is a common opinion that now reengineering is leaving its adolescence phase (the phase of ideals and emotional reactions to consolidated ways of thinking) to enter its mature phase (the phase of facing reality).

An interesting review of the BPR literature from 1990 to 1995 (Deakins and Makgill, 1997) has revealed that more than 88 per cent of the articles published on this topic are comments or case descriptions, while research and surveys account for only 4 per cent.

This study has also confirmed the importance attributed by the majority of authors to IT more as a driver than as a simple enabler of change. In a sense, the power of IT in driving the change of transactional, information‐based processes has induced the firm belief that IT would play the same thaumaturgic role in the re‐design of any other type of process. So the motto “Change IT: organisation will follow” has become the way of many top managers and consultants looking for easy success.

Unfortunately, as Davenport has clearly stated: “reengineering treated the people inside companies as if they were just so many bits and bytes, interchangeable parts to be reengineered. But no one wants to be reengineered”.

Moving away from these points and before approaching any other new book or article on reengineering, a key question needs to be asked: “What should we expect from a new book on reengineering?”.

To be honest, the answer will probably be different according to the profile (and, consequently, the information needs) of the respondent. Nevertheless I think that a common need would be for a book that highlights the critical issues of the change process. In my opinion, among the key issues that a book on reengineering should address today, there are two that are particularly critical: which role to assign to IT and how to manage the HR factor.

Michael Loh’s second edition of Re‐engineering at Work has chosen to focus on the second question, devoting only some basic considerations to the first issue.

A few words of the author will help to understand the philosophy and the structure of this book: “I see my role as a barnstorming agenda‐setter for modern business who leaves the details of implementing re‐engineering in particular companies to their staff whom I will train.”

The author, former consultant and partner‐in‐training for Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu International, has written this book for the senior managers that have the mandate to commit their organisation to a journey of change.

This is the reason why the four‐stage framework proposed by the author is presented as giving great emphasis upon establishing an imperative change and creating visions and targets, while less attention is paid to the design and implementation phases.

According to the author’s words, changing an organisation means changing the behaviour of its people. And unless those people are enthusiastic, no successful and lasting change can take place.

So managers have to understand in depth the culture, the belief system shared by the members of their organisations before starting any change. As group norms have the power to regulate the behaviour of group members, they have to be aligned to the new way of doing business (or to the new way of managing processes). The approach suggested by Dr Loh for getting culture aligned with the drivers of change seems to hinge on the fact that often members of a group may believe one thing and do another to maintain their membership in the group. So what is important is to instill new group norms that fit with both the driver of reengineering and the profound beliefs of people.

Not only should senior managers create a strong vision of the future of their company but also diffuse this vision inside the organisation setting targets and measuring results.

The issue raised by the author is certainly critical and fully deserves the attention that it gets in the book. One can share or not share this hard top‐down view of the change process, where it is not always easy to take apart leadership from authority and where empowerment seems to have little room. As the research study by Deakins and Makgill has affirmed, we simply don’t have enough empirical evidence collected and analysed to support the effectiveness and superiority of one change strategy on the other.

To conclude, we probably need not only books sending clear messages to senior managers about how to approach and manage BPR processes, but also empirical data on what results to expect from the different strategies of change that can be implemented.