An approach to business process reengineering: The contribution of socio-technical and soft or concepts

Current thinking on business process reingineering (BPR) is evaluated in the context of four schools of thought with respect to business strategy, with aspects of the management of change literature and with concepts taken from the socio-technical and soft operational research (OR) traditions. Based on the latter, a means of undertaking BPR projects is proposed and is illustrated by means of a case study. Inter alia, the centrality of information technology (IT) in BPR is questioned with greater emphasis being given to the identification of required information and an organizations ability to manage its information services.