Business process redesign: the wheel of Ixion

Published date01 June 1997
Pages248-264
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/01425459710176972
Date01 June 1997
AuthorRené Ten Bos
Subject MatterHR & organizational behaviour
Employee
Relations
19,3
248
Business process redesign:
the wheel of Ixion
René Ten Bos
Business School Nederland, Herkelum, The Netherlands
Introduction
Our organizations are haunted by a ghost. Some people think that this has been
the case since Taylor invented the principles of scientific management, but it
was not until the 1990s that the ghost was given an appropriate name: Business
Process Redesign (BPR). Other names, however, will do as well: Business
Process Re-engineering or Process Innovation (Davenport, 1992). It is a name
with technological connotations, as if it is meant to denote something venerable.
However, sceptical minds inveigh against the ghost and speak in terms of
Business Panacea Revisited (Willmott, 1994) or Big Personnel Reduction.
Not only are there many different names, we also encounter many definitions
of the phenomenon under discussion. However, the best known and most
popular definition goes like this:
[Business Process Redesign] is 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 (Hammer and Champy, 1993, p. 32).
The tone is melodramatic. The defenders of BPR have a distinct revolutionary
pathos. The classical text (Hammer and Champy, 1993) is presented as nothing
less than a “manifesto for a business revolution”. BPR is assumed to have
fundamental, radical, and dramatic consequences. Its defenders argue that it is
about nothing less than a revolution in the way we think about organizations.
Finally, we are able to heave a sigh of relief because we can throw off the age-old
yoke of labour division and replace it by an overall orientation on business
processes. Of course, the new type of orientation that is the result of BPR-efforts
is fully instrumental to increased performance: low costs, high quality, excellent
service and astonishing speed. Dissenters who are not aroused by the promises
of BPR are tiresome spoilsports who ought to be shot (Kalgaard, 1993, p. 71). As
a matter of fact, hard-baked revolutionaries cannot tolerate forces that impede
the pace of change. It may be concluded that there is no place whatsoever for the
“incrementalist orthodoxy that has prevailed for 30 years” (Grint, 1995, p. 109).
Despite the exuberance with which it was welcomed, BPR hardly guarantees
unequivocal success. On the contrary, even Michael Hammer has admitted that
50 per cent to 70 per cent of all BPR efforts fail (Hammer and Stanton, 1995).
Other gurus (Ballé, 1995; Obeng and Crainer, 1996) also acknowledge serious
problems with implementation. Problems are diverse: human nature simply
Employee Relations,
Vol. 19 No. 3, 1997, pp. 248-264.
© MCB University Press, 0142-5455
Received January 1997
Previously published in Bedrigfskunde, No. 1, 1997.
Business process
redesign
249
does not comply with such a technologically- and numerically-driven approach
like BPR; BPR projects tend to be fairly expensive (Metze, 1996; Willmott, 1994);
BPR is invariably presented as if it can be done in isolation of the social and
cultural context (Grint, 1995), and so on. One may really wonder why, in face of
all the practical problems attached to BPR, the gurus and their leaders firmly
hold on to it. The German philosopher Hegel once told his audience at the Berlin
university that if his philosophical system for the explanation of the world
would prove in some way or the other erroneous, this should not be attributed
to the system itself but to the world. In similar fashion, the advocates of BPR
immunize their change programme against any form of empirical doubt.
This article sympathizes with the aforementioned spoilsports and tries to
dampen the enthusiasm for BPR. In expressing my sympathy I will adopt the
same sort of pathos that is typical of Hammer. I believe that unrelenting pathos
might be the only way to counterbalance the revolutionary climate that
Hammer and fans are trying to stimulate. Although efforts to enhance the
efficiency of organizational processes are not reprehensible per se – we should
not forget that large-scale organizational inefficiency may be one of the major
reasons for environmental damage – I believe that the widespread enthusiasm
among managers for change programmes like BPR is very alarming. I will
show this by formulating ten points of critique which I will present in section 3.
In the next section, I will discuss some essential elements of BPR and also enter
into some recent developments in what, unfortunately, tends to become an
important managerial discipline.
The life of a ghost
In one of his few unpretentious moods, Michael Hammer (1990) has contended
that he did not invent BPR, but merely coined a catching name for a trend that
was taking place in some “remarkably successful” organizations. What do these
organizations know that others do not know?
The first and perhaps most important thing on the way to success is
abandoning the functional structure of the organization. Adam Smith has led us
to believe that the function or the task is the ultimate core of each work
organization. Given this assumption, the managerial challenge is to co-ordinate
the diversity of functions and tasks within the organization. In other words,
managers should design the organizational structure. This structure has been
defined as, first, the way tasks are divided and, second, the way in which they
are co-ordinated (Mintzberg, 1983). However, co-ordination is expensive since
you need co-ordinators. Unfortunately, these people are not involved in doing
any real work; they only take care that specific portions of real work are put
together. The problem is that co-ordinators simply represent costs because they
do not add any value since adding value is, ex hypothesi, the prerogative of real
workers.
But how can an organization avoid co-ordination? After all, if one leaves all
the real workers to fend for themselves, control problems will become
paramount. If one takes away the glue that has been applied between the tasks,

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