Reengineering the Corporation: A Review Essay

Re-engineering has burst onto the contemporary business scene as one of the most popular management interventions of the 1990s. Thus, it is important to understand its proponents' claims, as well as how they have positioned re-engineering in the management tool kit. One way to do this is to examine Michael Hammer and James Champy's Reengineering the Corporation. An analysis of their presentation, however, shows a great many unverified claims, factual errors, and logical inconsistencies. Contrary to the authors' assertions, there is an extraordinary amount of overlap between the quality and re-engineering movements. Rather than bash re-engineering, quality proponents must recognize that re-engineering builds on weaknesses in the quality movement. Practitioners need to focus on creating cumulative organizational learning from the various quality minifads, including re-engineering, and researchers need to examine the organizational practices conducive to such organizational learning.