Alessandra Agostini and Giorgio De Michelis

In their best-selling book M. Hammer and J. Champy (1993) claim that "Business Process Reengineering means putting aside much of the received Wisdom of 200 years of Industrial Management." But the book does not follow the above claim and in their view Business Process Reengineering (BPR) reduces to a radical rationalisation of the processes of a company on the basis of their expected outcomes, without any critical analysis of the core concepts of Industrial Management and Industrial Organisation (process, organisation, management, information systems, ...).