X‐engineering: ex cathedra?
| Published date | 01 February 2004 |
| Pages | 127-142 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/00483480410510651 |
| Date | 01 February 2004 |
| Author | David Collins |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
X-engineering: ex cathedra?
David Collins
Department of Accounting, Finance and Management, Essex
Management Centre, University of Essex, Colchester, UK
Keywords Business process re-engineering, Management gurus
Abstract This paper offers a critical analysis of X-engineering – an approach to management,
which it is claimed refines and extends business process reengineering (BPR) to offer sustainable
benefits to business and to the various communities, which constitute modern business
organizations. Noting that academic critiques of guru theorising in general and academic critiques
of BPR in particular have done little to exercise the minds of practitioners, the paper offers two
critical accounts of X-engineering. The first follows a familiar concern with the production of
X-engineering as it seeks to debunk the ideas and concepts, which constitute this body of knowledge.
The second offers an alternative account of guru theorising, which focuses upon the nature of
managerial work and on the consumption of management knowledge as it attempts to develop a
line of critique, which can reflect and yet intrude upon the complexities of managerial work.
Building upon this analysis of the consumption of guru theorising, the paper seeks to provide
counter-arguments and analysis for the constituencies, which can be expected to bear the brunt of
X-engineering.
Introduction
In 1990 Michael Hammer (Hammer, 1990) relabelled a range of existing
organizational initiatives and practices (Collins, 2001a) and precipitated the
development of an extravagant, yet highly influential fashion (Abrahamson,
1991) in management, known variously as business process reengineering
(Hammer and Champy, 1993) or business process redesign (Davenport and
Short, 1990). This management fashion has been critiqued, attacked and
debunked by key sectors of the academic community (for an overview, see
Grint, 1994; Grey and Mitev, 1995; Collins, 2000), but to little lasting effect.
Indeed, the original proponents of business process reengineering/redesign
(BPR) have remained steadfast in their commitment to the reengineering
project – until now that is – because James Champy (2002) has announced a
challenge to BPR, which he has labelled X-engineering.
This paper offers a critical review of Champy’s X-engineering endeavours,
which has been designed as a challenge to the X-engineering project. Yet the
paper is no simple exercise in debunking (Collins, 2001b). While it is true that
this paper sets out to question the efficacy and morality of the X-engineering
project, the analysis is under-scored by a (painful) awareness that academic
analyses of “guru theory” (Huczynski, 1993) tend to have little impact
when/where they fail to acknowledge either the complexities of managerial
practice (Watson, 2001) or the complex nature of guru-practitioner relations
(Clark and Fincham, 2002). Recognising this, the paper offers a critical review
of the X-engineering project, which seeks a connection with the worlds and
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X-engineering:
ex cathedra?
127
Received July 2002
Accepted November
2002
Personnel Review
Vol. 33 No. 1, 2004
pp. 127-142
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0048-3486
DOI 10.1108/00483480410510651
experiences of practitioners, and in so doing, attempts to provide practitioners
with ideas, arguments and perspectives, which might be used, variously, to
translate, deflect or reject X-engineering. In this regard the paper should be
read as an attempt to provide what might be termed “repertoires of resistance”
for those who might be expected to shoulder the burdens of the X-engineering
project.
Accordingly, the paper is structured as follows. We begin with a discussion
of the ideas and orientations, which inform Champy’s account of X-engineering.
Having completed this initial exposition we then pause to consider the image of
the guru and the modelling of the guru-practitioner relationship, which has
developed through the activities of debunking (Collins, 2001b). We will argue
that our understanding of the activities of gurus has been informed and yet
deformed by a model, which suggests that gurus have the capacity to enforce,
ex cathedra, statements about business and management because they enjoy a
one-way, linear and didactic relationship (Sturdy, 2002) with their clients.
Disputing the efficacy of this modelling of guru-practitioner relations, we will
offer an alternative realisation of the ways and means of guru theory, which
focuses upon the translation of ideas (Collins, 2001b, 2003) and on the
complexities of managing (Watson, 2001). Having completed this analysis of
the gurus and their modes of organizing, we then proceed to offer two attacks
on the X-engineering project. The first of these attacks employs the standard
arsenal of academic theorising/debunking as it seeks to undermine the
X-engineering project. Noting the commonalities between BPR and
X-engineering this first mode of critique revisits the academic criticisms
voiced against BPR to argue that the X-engineering will be hamstrung by the
problems, which beset BPR. In our second attack we acknowledge the validity
of the academic attacks made on BPR and yet we distance ourselves somewhat
from these concerns as we suggest the need to construct an alternative mode of
critique, which might reflect and relate to the day-to-day problems and
concerns of managers. Basing this alternative plan of attack on a reading of the
translation processes, which make and remake (Collins, 2003) guru theory as a
(more-or-less) workable organizational proposition we will argue that
(academic) attacks on guru theory will carry weight with practitioners only
when they make greater efforts to appreciate the complexities of managerial
work. Thus we conclude with a line of critique designed to reflect and to
intrude upon the complexities of organized life.
The X-engineering project
Champy’s (2002) account of X-engineering builds upon and yet seeks to adapt
the radical critique of industrial engineering, which was offered by the original
renderings of BPR, produced in 1990. The advocates of BPR, as you may recall,
argued that our business organizations have been designed to service the needs
of administrators rather than the desires of the market. As a result, they
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