Developing strategic perspectives on business process reengineering: From process reconfiguration to organizational change

Successful business process reengineering (BPR) efforts in many firms have been reported to significantly improve productivity and reduce staff. However, as the reality of large-scale process change sets in and reengineering failures start coming to the forefront, more careful thought must be given to the change process itself, and it is important that senior leaders in the organization develop a high-level strategic perspective on this multifaceted change phenomenon. To help develop this perspective, a process reconfiguration model and a framework of organizational change in BPR are presented in this paper. The process reconfiguration model shows how various functional activities involved in a business process may be reconfigured through a reengineering initiative. Such fundamental reconfigurations may be facilitated by the application of IT as well as a number of innovative organizational changes. Building upon this process reconfiguration model, a framework depicting elements of organizational change associated with BPR is presented. The framework identifies the various sources of changes, elements of change implementation, and the direction of organizational change stemming from BPR. It is hoped that based on this framework, we may be better able to plan and implement the complex process of organizational change associated with BPR.