Abstract:
In many organisations radical change towards a process orientation, often termed
Business Process Redesign/Re-engineering (BPR), is being undertaken with the aim of
achieving very significant improvements in performance. Often scholars and consultants
suggest that managers should base their redesign efforts on a ‘clean sheet’ view of the
organisation. There appears to be an implicit assumption that BPR initiatives will take
place in organisations where no other changes are in progress. In practice this does not
appear to be the case; in many enterprises BPR is instigated against a back-drop of a
plethora of change initiatives which have been designed to address previous strategic and
tactical issues. The literature deals inadequately with the relationship between BPR and
other change initiatives. Hence managers often do not appreciate the way in which these
initiatives can contribute, or indeed hinder, the implementation of a major BPR
programme. A framework to enable managers gain an overview of initiatives already in
place, to ensure that work was not be duplicated and to identify and redeploy resources
more efficiently would be of value. In addition, this information would contribute to more
effective decision making when managers are called upon to deal with existing change
initiatives in parallel with BPR. Janet Price, Ashley Braganza and Oscar Weiss present a
framework, the Change Initiative Diamond, which has been developed to classify existing
change projects within an organisation or strategic business unit prior to a BPR initiative.
The authors present two organisational examples of ways in which the Diamond can be
operationalised and provide initial guidelines for managers balancing several projects in
tandem with BPR initiatives.
