Business Process Redesign and Organization Development

Abstract

The recent popularity of the reengineering approach to changing the way work is done in organizations, combined with even more recent reports of failures in using this approach, motivate this article. The authors, a business process redesign (BPR) and an organization development (OD) practitioner, draw on their experiences, including five cases of organizational change, to ask whether OD could provide a framework of organizational understanding and change management that would enable BPR to be implemented successfully. The difficulties of collaboration across these two disciplines are explored. These include the different histories and approaches used as well as differences in language, values, and organizational arrangements. The cases suggest that although an OD framework enhances the likelihood of BPR success, more research is needed in this area. Additional variables to explore are the client organization's knowledge base, the roles of the consultants in the change effort, and their mutual relationship.