Multiple personalities: the case of business process reengineering

BPR can be deconstructed into four different identities. In the first place it is a product of the management fad industry. In the second place it is part of a neo‐Taylorist movement because of the following characteristics: a top‐down streamlining of operations, unproblematic acceptance of typical Taylorist solutions and the prevalence of assertions that the outcome for workers is an upgraded work content. In the third place BPR is a euphemism for downsizing. Downsizing is much more at the core of BPR than some of its proponents would have it. Finally, BPR functions as a non‐normative, descriptive label for process oriented change. The paper seeks to show how the different identities of BPR interact and get into one another’s way.