hen even the most ardent protagonists of BPR, such as Hammer & Champy, are quoting failure rates from 50% up to 80%, is BPR really such a sure fire solution to the challenges of the nineties? Is the reason for these failures solely the inability to manage organisational change, or is there a more fundamental problem with BPR? And is managing the culture key to effective change, particularly within the context of a BPR initiative?
These questions were the impetus behind a Henley Management College MBA dissertation. This management summary reports on the resulting survey into organisational change techniques used by UK organisations undertaking BPR.
Executive Highlights
· Most BPR organisations are making significant and wide reaching changes to their organisation in response to strategic business needs. The trend is to results oriented and more fluid structures.
· Highly centralised organisations, as epitomised in role management styles, have seen their day, but there remains a tendency to formalise the work processes through task allocation, procedures, rules and controls.
· BPR results in an average 18% reduction in staff.
· Management are emphasising the harder techniques that more overtly control staff behaviour. However, many do get their staff involved in process redesign. Many in management (middle management?) are not exhibiting the required behaviour.
· BPR and change management consultants are widely used but they do not overtly influence the choice of culture change techniques selected. Neither do staff have much influence in the choice of techniques used.
· Many improvement are being realised but the empowerment of staff is not one of them. Staff commitment appears to be the biggest concern and innovation by staff is low. Despite these findings, respondents definitely believe they can change their employee's values and beliefs. More improvements came with using many change techniques but most occurred when a range of both hard and soft techniques were used.