Multiple personalities: the case of business process reengineering

Introduction Making sense of the debate on business process reengineering (BPR) is a daunting task. One is confronted with a wide variety of contradictory interpretations. Some see it as a break with Taylorism (Davenport and Short, 1990), others see it as a direct continuation of Taylorism (Tinaikar et al., 1995). Chief proponents see it as something very different from continuous improvement (Hammer and Champy, 1994, p. 49). Others refuse to see a sharp distinction between BPR and continuous improvement (Winslow, 1996). On the one hand we learn that BPR is a self-conscious American way of outsmarting rather than imitating the Japanese (Grint, 1997, p. 45). On the other hand, Japanese companies such as Toshiba (television production in the UK) appear among best practice examples of BPR (Oram and Wellins, 1995). Some see a clean slate approach as essential, others maintain that analyzing and modeling existing processes is worthwhile as part of BPR (Jacobson et al., 1994). There are also authors who treat BPR in the context of management fads, which would basically mean that BPR means little at all. Finally, the core BPR literature is not free from internal contradictions. The starting point in this paper for dealing with these differences and inconsistencies is: accepting that BPR has more than one identity. In doing so, the paper deconstructs BPR into four identities.