The Violent Rhetoric of Re‐engineering: Management Consultancy on the Offensive

Abstract

Business process re-engineering (BPR) was a leading form of organizational restructuring from the late 1980s until the late 1990s. This paper seeks to contextualize its development and account for its particularly bellicose language by re¯ecting on its historical antecedents in the west and its contemporary competitors in the east. We suggest that one way of reading BPR is as a form of`inverse colonization' in which US managerial discourse both assimilated and revolted against the growing domination of Japanese thinking and practice. We conclude with some speculative comments on related causes of the rise of violent managerial rhetoric.

Understanding Business Process Management: Implications for Theory and Practice

“…By the end of the 90s, the business community was deemed to be moving on to other issues such as CRM and ERP. BPR was regarded by many as simply another 'management fad' with little to merit such high levels of research attention (Grint and Case 1998). …”

Two quality evolutions: Industry vs. health care

“…32 Locock, L. (2003): "Healthcare redesign: meaning, origins and application", Quality and Safety in Health Care, 12(1), 53-57. 33 Grint, K., Case, p. (1998): "The violent rhetoric of reengineering: management consultancy on the offensive", J Manag Stud, 35, 557-77. 34 : "The Aligning forces for Quality initiative: Background and evolution from 2005 to 2012", Am J Manag Care, 18(6), 115-125.…”

Organizational Learning and Knowledge Management

“…Thus, we are not able to see a linear development over time in this area; development has been rapid and chaotic, even though it is still possible to discern some decisive factors. To some extent, knowledge management has gained academic legitimacy on the back of Nonaka's work, but the driving force in the corporate world has come from major consultancy companies seeking to capitalize on the enormous potential of information technology in a period following disenchantment with the methods and prescriptions of re-engineering (Hammer and Champy, 1993;Grint and Case, 1998). The idea is pretty simple, since it starts with the neo-economic view of the strategic value of organizational knowledge and then uses familiar IT software such as databases and electronic conferencing to facilitate the acquisition, sharing, storage, retrieval, and utilization of knowledge.…”