Synopsis
"America's business problem is that it is entering the twenty-first century with companies designed during the nineteenth century." So write Michael Hammer and James Champy in this pioneering book on the most important topic in business circles today: reengineering - the radical redesign of a company's processes, organization, and culture. Reengineering the Corporation offers nothing less than a brand-new vision of how companies should be organized and managed if they are to succeed - indeed even survive - in the 1990s and beyond. Reengineering does not seek to make businesses better through incremental improvements - 10 percent faster here or 20 percent less expensive there. The aim of reengineering is a quantum leap in performance - the 100 percent or even tenfold improvements that can follow from entirely new work processes and structures.
Building on their firsthand experiences, Hammer and Champy show how some of the world's premier corporations use the principles of reengineering to save hundreds of millions of dollars a year, to achieve unprecedented levels of customer satisfaction, and to speed up and make more flexible all aspects of their operations. The key to reengineering is abandoning the most basic notions on which the modern organization is founded. Today's workers and managers are prisoners of antiquated theories about organizing work - theories that date back to the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution. These ideas - the division of labor, the need for elaborate controls, the managerial hierarchy - no longer work in a world of global competition and unrelenting change. In their stead, the authors introduce the notion of process orientation, of concentrating on and rethinking end-to-end activities that create value for customers.
This book is about more than ideas, however. From their work with leading companies around the world, Hammer and Champy have learned how to make reengineering succeed. They lay out the approaches that have enabled such companies as Bell Atlantic, Taco Bell, and Hallmark Cards to reinvent themselves. They offer a vision of the reengineered corporation and a road map for companies to follow in getting there.
Reviews
Management consultants Hammer and Champy thoughtfully critique the management procedures of American business and offer a promising prescription in this invigorating study. "It is no longer necessary or desirable for companies to organize their work around Adam Smith's division of labor," they state, arguing that task-oriented jobs are becoming obsolete as changes in customer bases, competition and the rate of change itself alter the marketplace. Post-industrial companies must be "reengineered," which necessitates starting anew, going back to the beginning to invent a better way of accomplishing tasks. The process requires a leader with vision using information technologies, consulting closely with suppliers to reduce inventories, and empowering employees so that decision-making "becomes part of the work." Hammer and Champy acknowledge that reengineering can be difficult to launch and to sustain; yet they provide clear, specific guidelines and excellent case studies. Their superb book should have strong appeal to managers and general readers alike.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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