From business reengineering to business process change management: a longitudinal study of trends and practices

Business process reengineering has been prominently discussed and implemented in a large number of firms around the world. While the notion of radical change is intuitively appealing to “fix” organizational woes, it has not always met with the degree of success originally claimed by its many proponents. This article studies the evolution of the reengineering concept and its evolution toward the broader notion of process change management. Reported here are the results of two studies that explore reengineering from a project implementation perspective and an organizational perspective at two different points in time. The results show remarkable consistency in the importance of nontechnology management issues concerning strategy, change and people. Further, the notion of continuous change seems to be becoming,more important. The study provides a foundation for identifying key variables that can be studied in order to effectively manage this multifaceted phenomenon