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Reengineering the Corporation

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Reengineering the Corporation

In the book “Reengineering the Corporation”, Hammer and Champy create a new frame of managerial relations and organizational bureaucracy. The authors address such important problems as impact of technology on business environment, new labor relations and organizational structures affected a modern corporation. The book consists of 13 chapters and an Epilogue discussing different problems and issue of modern organizational bureaucracy. The authors criticize old approaches to management based on Adam Smith 's division of labor and methods of business relations. At the beginning of the book the authors question: “If managements want companies that are lean, …show more content…

Reengineering is inherently complex undertaking. Changes are made up of interrelated parts, meaning that the failure of one part may have significant downstream consequences. They are unique, so past experience is an imperfect guide to the future. They entail the use of borrowed resources that may not be available when they are needed. They operate in a management quagmire where accountability is unclear and key actors who follow their own agendas may operate at cross-purposes. Such an environment is ideal for errors and omissions. There is a constant lurking threat that the best intentions will go awry, that promises made will not be kept (p. 128). It can be contained to a degree by the implementation of thoughtful methods and procedures. Reengineering has radically changed corporations: one element of organizational change that is often overlooked is compensation strategies. Most companies still compensate employees the way they did decades ago. However, these pay strategies no longer work in process and team-based cultures. The authors identify four work cultures (functional, process, time-based, and network) and explain how to align pay strategies with each one. Chapters 8 and 9, “The Experience of Process Redesign” and “Embanking on Reengineering” discuss methods and procedures which should be taken into account on making sure that nothing falls through the cracks. They describe the steps that should be taken

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