Business Process Reengineering (BPR) - Hammer & Champy (1993)

Theory Publication Information

Citation Information

Why Was the Model Created?

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, many US firms faced intensifying competitive pressure. A recurring argument in the management literature of the period was that large information-technology investments were not translating into proportional gains in productivity or competitiveness (sometimes framed as the “productivity paradox”). One common diagnosis, and the starting premise of BPR, was that organizations had used IT to automate existing processes rather than to redesign them.

Michael Hammer, a former MIT computer science professor turned management consultant, and James Champy, then chairman of CSC Index consulting, argued that technological capability had outpaced organizations’ willingness to fundamentally rethink how work gets done. On this view, treating IT as a way to improve legacy processes incrementally left much of its potential value on the table.

Hammer and Champy created the Business Process Reengineering framework to address this gap. They argued that dramatic performance improvements required not merely automating existing processes but fundamentally reimagining how organizations performed work. Rather than continuous improvement making incremental changes, organizations should embrace radical redesign enabled by modern technology. BPR challenged core organizational assumptions: Why do customers call seven departments instead of one? Why do approval processes require signatures from multiple managers? Why do manufacturing require sequential assembly instead of parallel production? By questioning fundamental process assumptions and leveraging technology capability, organizations could achieve dramatic cost reduction, quality improvement, service enhancement, and speed improvement.

Core Concepts and Definitions

Business Process Reengineering centers on several core concepts:

• Business Process: An organized set of activities that produces a business outcome. Processes have clear inputs, defined steps, and measurable outputs. Traditional organizations organize around functions (manufacturing, sales, accounting); processes organize around value delivery (order fulfillment, customer service, product development).
• Fundamental Rethinking: Questioning core assumptions about why work is performed a particular way. Rather than accepting legacy processes, organizations ask: Why is this step necessary? Could it be eliminated? Could it be combined with another step? Could it be performed in parallel rather than sequence?
• Radical Redesign: Making dramatic changes to work processes rather than incremental improvements. Radical redesign reorders process steps, eliminates redundant activities, compresses timeline, reduces complexity, and fundamentally reimagines work organization.
• Dramatic Improvement: Achieving major performance gains rather than marginal improvements. Hammer and Champy define reengineering as seeking dramatic improvements in critical contemporary measures of performance such as cost, quality, service, and speed. Secondary sources commonly describe BPR as targeting order-of-magnitude rather than incremental improvement, distinguishing it from continuous improvement approaches that target modest percentage gains.
• Technology Enablement: Leveraging information technology to enable redesigned processes. Technology enables radical redesign by automating activities, compressing timeline, enabling parallel processing, facilitating communication, and reducing coordination complexity.
• Process-Centered Organization: Organizing around processes rather than functions. Traditional hierarchical organizations organize around departments; process-centered organizations organize around value-delivery processes with cross-functional teams owning complete processes.
• Customer-Centric Focus: Designing processes from customer perspective rather than internal organizational convenience. What does the customer need? What steps deliver value to the customer? What delays frustrate customers?

What Does the Model Measure?

Business Process Reengineering is a prescriptive management framework rather than a quantitative measurement model, so it does not define a single construct or measurement instrument. Instead, it is commonly framed around four outcome measures that Hammer and Champy identify as critical contemporary performance measures:

• Cost: Unit cost, total process cost, resource utilization, and overhead associated with delivering a process output.
• Quality: Defect rates, error rates, first-pass yield, and conformance to customer or specification requirements.
• Service: Customer-perceived responsiveness, accuracy, convenience, and reliability of process interactions.
• Speed: Cycle time, throughput time, and time to deliver the process output end-to-end.

The framework does not prescribe specific measurement instruments, reliability coefficients, or validation procedures characteristic of psychometric models. Applied BPR practice uses organization-specific operational metrics tied to the processes being redesigned.

Source availability note:A PDF of the primary source (Hammer & Champy, 1993) is not available in the project reference library. Claims in this summary are drawn from widely documented definitions, Hammer’s 1990 Harvard Business Review article, and standard secondary treatments. Direct quotation and page-level verification against the book have not been performed.

Preceding Models or Theories

Hammer and Champy do not provide an extensive academic literature review in Reengineering the Corporation. The frameworks below are ones that secondary sources and subsequent scholars commonly identify as intellectual context for BPR or as movements BPR positioned itself against:

• Business Process Redesign (Davenport & Short, 1990): Davenport and Short’s earlier framework emphasized using information technology to improve business processes. BPR adopted the process focus but extended it with emphasis on radical redesign rather than incremental improvement.
• Total Quality Management (Deming, 1986; Juran, 1989): TQM introduced continuous improvement philosophy. BPR acknowledged TQM’s value but argued that continuous improvement alone could not generate competitive differentiation; radical redesign was needed.
• Operations Management (Skinner, 1969; Hayes & Wheelwright, 1984): Operations management research had long examined how manufacturing and service delivery processes could be optimized. BPR draws on a process orientation consistent with this tradition, although the book itself is largely practitioner-directed and does not engage this literature in detail.
• Organizational Design Theory (Mintzberg, 1979; Child, 1972): Organization design research examined how organizational structure affects performance. BPR argued that process-centered organization design could overcome limitations of functional organizational design.
• Diffusion of Innovations (Rogers, 1983): Rogers’ diffusion research examined how innovations spread through a social system. BPR does not directly build on diffusion theory, but shares the premise that successful technology adoption requires organizational change, not just technical implementation.
• Competitive Strategy Theory (Porter, 1985): Strategy research emphasized competitive advantage through cost leadership, differentiation, or focus. BPR argued that radical process redesign enabled sustained competitive advantage.

Describe The Model

Business Process Reengineering provides a framework for fundamentally redesigning business processes to achieve dramatic performance improvements. The framework emphasizes questioning fundamental assumptions about how work is organized, using technology to enable radical redesign, and organizing around customer-centric processes rather than internal functions.

Four Key Words in BPR Definition

• Fundamental: Examining core assumptions about why work is performed a particular way. Rather than accepting inherited processes, organizations question whether steps are necessary, whether sequence is optimal, whether activities can be combined or eliminated. Fundamental questioning often reveals that traditional approaches reflect historical constraints that no longer apply rather than current optimization.
• Radical: Making major changes rather than incremental improvements. Radical redesign reorders process steps, eliminates redundancy, compresses timeline, reduces complexity. Radical change requires not just management approval but organizational commitment because it disrupts familiar work patterns and requires new skills.
• Dramatic: Achieving major performance gains not marginal improvements. Hammer and Champy position BPR as targeting dramatic (rather than incremental) improvement in critical performance measures. Secondary sources typically contrast this with continuous improvement frameworks such as TQM that target modest percentage gains. Dramatic improvement is presented as requiring fundamental rethinking enabled by technology.
• Processes: Organizing around value-delivery processes rather than functions. Rather than departments (manufacturing, sales, accounting, finance), organizations organize around processes (order fulfillment, product development, customer service). Process organization enables end-to-end accountability and customer focus.

Core BPR Principles

• Challenge everything: Do not accept inherited process assumptions. Ask why each step exists, why sequence is current, why multiple approvals are required. Often there is no compelling answer except historical practice.
• Technology enables redesign: Information technology is not added to existing processes but enables fundamental redesign. Technology eliminates intermediate activities, enables parallel processing, eliminates geographic constraints, automates routine decisions, compresses cycle time.
• Focus on processes, not functions: Organize around customer-centric processes rather than internal functions. Process-centered organization eliminates handoffs between departments, improves responsiveness, increases accountability.
• Think customer perspective: Design processes from customer perspective. What does customer need? What steps deliver value? What delays frustrate customers? Rather than optimizing for internal organizational convenience, processes should optimize for customer satisfaction.
• Radical not incremental:Make dramatic changes rather than tweaks. Continuous improvement refines existing processes; BPR, in Hammer and Champy’s framing, reimagines them. The authors argue this requires greater management commitment and, when successful, yields correspondingly larger improvements.
• Measure results: Define clear performance metrics before redesign. Track cost, quality, service, speed. Ensure that redesign produces measurable improvement in critical metrics.

Hammer’s 1990 Principles for Reengineering (HBR)

In his 1990 Harvard Business Reviewarticle “Reengineering Work: Don’t Automate, Obliterate,” Hammer articulated a widely cited set of principles that secondary sources treat as canonical reengineering prescriptions. These principles are paraphrased below from commonly reproduced summaries:

• Organize around outcomes, not tasks: Design jobs around complete outcomes delivered to customers rather than narrow task specializations.
• Have those who use the output of the process perform the process: Push work to those who consume its results, collapsing handoffs between groups.
• Subsume information-processing work into the real work that produces the information: Treat information creation and processing as integrated with the operational work, not as a separate downstream activity.
• Treat geographically dispersed resources as though they were centralized: Use information technology to coordinate distributed resources as if they were co-located.
• Link parallel activities instead of integrating their results: Coordinate parallel work during execution rather than reconciling independent results afterward.
• Put the decision point where the work is performed, and build control into the process: Flatten decision-making by embedding authority and control mechanisms at the point of work.
• Capture information once and at the source: Record data a single time, at its origin, and share rather than re-enter it across the organization.

BPR Implementation Approach

• Identify critical processes: Not all processes merit reengineering. Identify processes that significantly impact customer value, competitive advantage, or organizational performance. Focus reengineering on processes where radical improvement will generate greatest competitive advantage.
• Understand current process: Before redesigning, understand current process in detail. Map current process flows, identify bottlenecks, understand why steps are performed. Detailed understanding reveals assumptions that can be challenged.
• Envision future process: Imagine ideal process unconstrained by legacy systems or organizational structure. What would process look like if designed from scratch for customer satisfaction? How would technology enable redesign?
• Leverage technology: Use information technology not to automate current processes but to enable fundamentally different processes. Technology should compress cycle time, eliminate activities, enable parallel processing, improve quality.
• Redesign organization: Reengineered processes often require organizational redesign. Functional departments may be eliminated or consolidated. Cross-functional teams may own processes. Decision-making authority may be redistributed.
• Change culture and mindsets: Reengineering requires cultural change. Employees must accept new ways of working, new skill requirements, new organizational reporting relationships. Leadership commitment and change management are critical.
• Pilot and learn (common modern practice):Subsequent BPR and BPM practice typically emphasizes piloting redesigned processes at small scale before enterprise rollout. This is more of a later, risk-adjusted refinement than a principle of Hammer and Champy’s 1993 framing, which more often advocated larger-scale radical change.

Main Strengths

• Ambitious performance targets: BPR, as framed by Hammer and Champy, targets dramatic rather than marginal improvement. Proponents argue this ambition is what distinguishes BPR from continuous-improvement programs; whether it yields competitive advantage in any given case is contingent on execution and context.
• Technology-enabled approach: BPR recognizes that modern technology enables fundamentally different work organization. Rather than automating existing processes, technology enables radical redesign.
• Process-centered perspective: Emphasis on process organization rather than functional organization can improve customer focus and responsiveness.
• Addresses competitive challenges: For organizations facing declining competitiveness or market disruption, radical redesign enabled by technology may be necessary.
• Practical framework: Provides specific approach for rethinking and redesigning business processes rather than abstract theory.
• High-impact potential (claimed): Hammer and Champy, and subsequent practitioner literature, cite cases in which reengineered processes are reported to have produced substantial cost, quality, speed, and service improvements. Independent evaluation of these cases is limited.

Main Weaknesses

• High reported failure rate:Secondary sources, and Hammer’s own later writing, commonly cite a high share of BPR initiatives (often reported at roughly 70%) as failing to deliver expected results. Specific failure-rate figures vary by source and methodology and should be treated as indicative rather than precise.
• Underestimates change management complexity: BPR emphasizes process and technology redesign but underestimates difficulty of organizational and cultural change required for implementation.
• Limited guidance on change management: While BPR identifies what processes should be redesigned, it provides limited guidance on how to manage organizational resistance, skill development, and cultural change.
• Employee and union resistance: Radical process redesign often eliminates positions and requires new skills, generating employee resistance and union opposition.
• Technology requirements may be overestimated: BPR assumes technology can enable redesign but sometimes technology limitations constrain redesign options. Technology implementation may be more complex and costly than anticipated.
• Contingency factors underspecified: Framework does not specify which processes are good candidates for reengineering or which organizational contexts support successful reengineering.
• Sustainability challenges: Some reengineered processes revert to prior approaches as initial change effort ends. Sustaining redesigned processes requires ongoing management attention.
• Limited attention to inter-process dependencies: Framework emphasizes individual process redesign but provides limited guidance on managing dependencies when multiple processes are reengineered.

Key Contributions

• Challenged continuous improvement paradigm: Argued that incremental improvement alone was insufficient for competitive differentiation in many contexts and that radical redesign could be necessary in competitive markets.
• Connected technology adoption to process redesign: Argued that information technology should not be used primarily to automate existing processes, but to enable fundamentally redesigned ones. Technology capability, in this framing, drives process rethinking rather than being layered onto legacy processes.
• Articulated process-centered perspective: Championed organizing around customer-centric processes rather than internal functions. This perspective influenced organizational design thinking.
• Provided practical reengineering methodology: Offered specific framework and approach for redesigning business processes rather than abstract theory. Methodology could be applied by consulting firms and organizations.
• Fueled a significant consulting practice: Secondary sources describe BPR as a major driver of management-consulting work in the mid-1990s, with multiple large firms (notably including CSC Index, where Champy was an executive) developing branded BPR methodologies.
• Popularized ambitious redesign: Widely cited BPR case studies reported substantial performance improvements attributed to radical process redesign, although rigorous independent evaluation of these cases has been limited.
• Influenced enterprise software implementations: BPR emphasis on process redesign influenced enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementations, which often required significant process redesign.
• Reinforced IT as a strategic lever:BPR joined a broader 1990s argument (alongside frameworks such as Davenport & Short, 1990 and strategic-IT literature) that information technology should be treated as an enabler of organizational transformation rather than a back-office cost center.

Internal Validity

As a prescriptive management framework rather than an empirical theory, BPR is not directly tested through construct validation procedures. Considerations typically raised about its internal logic include:

• Internal coherence of argument: The argument that questioning legacy process assumptions and leveraging information technology can enable substantial performance improvement is internally coherent. Whether any given organization should expect dramatic results from applying the framework depends on many contingencies not specified in the framework itself.
• Compatibility with practitioner case reports: The framework is consistent with the narrative structure of case reports commonly cited by BPR proponents. Published reports of dramatic cost, speed, and competitive improvements are largely practitioner-authored or consultant-authored rather than peer-reviewed empirical studies.
• Consistent with technology adoption research:The framework’s emphasis on technology enabling organizational change aligns with technology adoption research demonstrating that technology adoption requires organizational adaptation.
• Recognizes implementation challenges: More recent BPR work acknowledges that implementation challenges are substantial, improving validity by recognizing contingency factors.
• Practitioner examples cited: Hammer and Champy draw on case studies of reengineering initiatives (for example IBM Credit, Ford, and Kodak in the original book) to illustrate framework principles. These are author-selected illustrations rather than systematic empirical validation.
• Accounts for variation in outcomes: Framework acknowledges that outcomes vary based on leadership commitment, organizational readiness, and change management capability, explaining why some initiatives succeed while others fail.

External Validity

As a prescriptive framework rather than an empirical theory, BPR is not subject to formal generalizability testing. Practitioner and secondary-source reports describe its application across a wide range of contexts:

• Reported across industries: BPR has reportedly been applied in manufacturing, services, finance, healthcare, and government, though reported outcomes and methodologies vary widely.
• Reported across organization sizes: BPR implementations have been described in large enterprises and, less commonly, smaller organizations; implementation complexity and resource requirements appear to scale with organization size.
• Reported across process types: Case reports cover manufacturing, service delivery, administrative, and product development processes.
• Geographic variation: While developed in Western context, BPR has been adopted globally, though implementation challenges vary by cultural context and organizational maturity.
• Limited applicability to stable environments: BPR is typically motivated by competitive pressure or performance crisis; organizations in stable, profitable environments may lack both the urgency and the political appetite for radical redesign.
• Contingent on management commitment: Success depends heavily on senior leadership commitment to change. BPR is more likely to succeed in organizations with committed leadership.
• Contingent on technology readiness: BPR assumes sufficient technology capability to enable redesigned processes. Organizations with limited technology expertise may struggle with implementation.
• Contingent on change management capability: Success depends on organizational capability to manage change, develop employee skills, and overcome resistance. Organizations with strong change management cultures are more likely to succeed.

Relevance to Technology Adoption

Business Process Reengineering addresses technology adoption by arguing that technology adoption should drive organizational and process redesign rather than simply automating existing processes. In Hammer and Champy’s framing, organizations should ask not how to automate current processes but what fundamentally different processes the technology makes possible.

Barriers to Technology-Enabled Redesign Identified

• Legacy process assumptions: Organizations inherit process approaches and accept them without questioning fundamental assumptions. Challenging these assumptions requires cognitive shift.
• Inadequate technology understanding: Organizations may not understand what technology enables. Technology leaders and business leaders must collaborate to envision redesigned processes.
• Insufficient organizational change management: Radical redesign requires substantial organizational change. Organizations lacking change management capability struggle with implementation.
• Employee resistance: Radical redesign eliminates positions and requires new skills. Employees may resist changes that threaten job security or require extensive learning.
• Union opposition: Labor organizations may resist changes that eliminate positions or reduce union membership.
• Insufficient management commitment: Radical redesign requires sustained leadership commitment and resource allocation. Secondary-source accounts of BPR failures commonly identify weak or inconsistent executive sponsorship as a contributing factor.
• Technology implementation challenges: Implementing technology required for redesigned processes may be more complex and costly than anticipated.
• Organizational culture barriers: Organizations with risk-averse cultures may avoid radical redesign despite potential benefits.

Leadership Actions the Framework Prescribes

• Question fundamental assumptions: Challenge inherited process approaches. Ask why work is performed a particular way. Explore whether sequence is necessary or steps are essential.
• Focus on critical processes: Identify processes where radical improvement will generate greatest competitive advantage. Prioritize reengineering effort.
• Leverage technology vision: Envision how technology enables fundamentally different processes. Technology should not automate current processes but enable redesign.
• Define ambitious targets: Set dramatic (not incremental) performance improvement targets. Secondary sources suggest that order-of-magnitude targets drive more radical thinking than modest percentage-improvement goals.
• Build cross-functional teams: Assemble teams including business leaders, technology experts, and process participants. Diverse perspectives enable creative redesign.
• Communicate change rationale: Clearly communicate why radical redesign is necessary and how it benefits organization and employees. Address concerns and build commitment.
• Manage change aggressively: Invest in change management including training, communication, role redesign, and cultural change. Change management is as important as process redesign.
• Sustain improvement: After implementation, maintain focus on redesigned processes. Ensure that processes do not revert to prior approaches. Continuous monitoring ensures sustainability.

Following Models or Theories

BPR sits in a broader stream of process-improvement and transformation frameworks, some of which precede it, run parallel to it, or build partly on its ideas. The entries below identify frameworks commonly discussed alongside BPR rather than direct descendants of it:

• Business Process Management (BPM):The broader BPM discipline emerged through the 1990s and 2000s (see, e.g., Zur Muehlen & Recker, 2008 on process modeling languages) and differs from BPR by emphasizing ongoing process monitoring, measurement, and iterative improvement rather than one-time radical redesign.
• Lean Management (Womack & Jones, 1996): Lean has deeper roots in the Toyota Production System (originating decades earlier) and was popularized in the West through Womack and Jones’ work. It is contemporaneous with BPR rather than a successor, and emphasizes waste elimination and continuous flow rather than one-time radical redesign.
• Six Sigma (George & George, 2002): Six Sigma originated at Motorola in the mid-1980s, predating BPR, and emphasizes statistical reduction of process variation. It is commonly discussed alongside BPR as an alternative or complementary process-improvement tradition.
• Digital Transformation (Westerman et al., 2014):Later digital transformation literature shares BPR’s premise that technology should reshape how work is organized, not just automate it. Digital transformation is a broader umbrella with multiple intellectual sources, not a direct extension of BPR.
• Agile Methodology (Beck et al., 2001): Agile emerged from software engineering practice and has its own distinct intellectual lineage. It is often discussed in the same frame as BPR because both emphasize rethinking work, but the two have largely independent origins.
• BPR implementation research: Subsequent studies have examined BPR success and failure factors, contributing to understanding of implementation challenges and contingency factors such as leadership commitment, change management capability, and the scope of process redesign.
• Enterprise Resource Planning (SAP, Oracle, others): ERP systems often serve as technology backbone for reengineered processes. Many BPR initiatives centered on ERP implementation.
• Change Management Literature: Change management as a field has its own long-standing roots (Lewin, Kotter, and others) that predate BPR. BPR implementation experience contributed to ongoing interest in managing organizational resistance and sustaining redesigned processes, rather than founding the field.

References

1. Hammer, M., & Champy, J. (1993). Reengineering the corporation: A manifesto for business revolution. HarperBusiness.
2. Juran, J. M. (1989). Juran on leadership for quality: An executive handbook. Free Press.
3. Beck, K., Beedle, M., van Bennekum, A., Cockburn, A., Cunningham, W., Fowler, M., Grenning, J., Highsmith, J., Hunt, A., Jeffries, R., Kern, J., Marick, B., Martin, R. C., Mellor, S., Schwaber, K., Sutherland, J., & Thomas, D. (2001). Manifesto for Agile Software Development. https://agilemanifesto.org/
4. Deming, W. E. (1986). Out of the crisis: Quality, productivity, and competitive position. MIT Center for Advanced Engineering Study.
5. Rogers, E. M. (1983). Diffusion of innovations (3rd ed.). Free Press.
6. Porter, M. E. (1985). Competitive advantage: Creating and sustaining superior performance. Free Press.
7. Mintzberg, H. (1979). The structuring of organizations. Prentice-Hall.
8. George, M. L., & George, D. (2002). Lean Six Sigma: Combining Six Sigma quality with lean speed. McGraw-Hill.
9. Womack, J. P., & Jones, D. T. (1996). Lean thinking: Banish waste and create wealth in your corporation. Simon & Schuster.

Further Reading

1. Davenport, T. H., & Short, J. E. (1990). The new industrial engineering: Information technology and business process redesign. Sloan Management Review, 31(4), 11-27.
2. Hammer, M. (1990). Reengineering work: Don’t automate, obliterate. Harvard Business Review, 68(4), 104-112.
3. Zur Muehlen, M., & Recker, J. (2008). How much language is enough? Theoretical and practical perspectives on the adaptability of process modeling languages. Advanced Information Systems Engineering, 30 - 44.

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