Rengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution

FROM OUR EDITORS

The problem with American business is that it is entering the 21st century dragging behind it an outdated and cumbersome set of corporate principles formulated in the 1800s. Although these principles may have served us well in the past, the time has come to retire and replace them if we are to survive the 1990s and beyond. In this book, two respected management consultants address the most important issue in business circles today: reengineering. Neither a quick fix nor a plan for incremental improvements, reengineering is a radical corporate redesign that discards the accumulated business wisdom of the past 200 years, replacing it with a brand new model and an associated set of principles. Examining the firsthand experiences of companies that have reinvented themselves for success, Hammer and Champy present their revolutionary blueprint for creating a new kind of company for the brave new world of business.

ANNOTATION

The New York Times bestseller that allows companies to make quantum leaps in performance by redesigning from scratch how they do their work.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

No business concept was more important to America's economic revival in the 1990s than reengineering -- introduced to the world in Michael Hammer and James Champy's Reengineering the Corporation. Already a classic, this international bestseller describes how the radical redesign of a company's processes, organization, and culture can achieve a quantum leap in performance.

But if you think that reengineering once was enough, think again. More changes, more challenges are coming in the twenty-first century. Now Hammer and Champy have updated and revised their milestone work for the New Economy they helped to create -- promising to help corporations save hundreds of millions of dollars more, raise their customer satisfaction still higher, and grow ever more nimble in the years to come.

SYNOPSIS

The business classic and international bestseller of the '90s, now revised and updated for the new century.

No business concept was more important to America's economic revival in the 1990s than reengineering -- introduced to the world in Michael Hammer and James Champy's Reengineering the Corporation.

FROM THE CRITICS

Business Week

May well be the best-written, most well-reasoned business book for the managerial masses since In Search of Excellence.

Publishers Weekly

Management consultants Hammer and Champy thoughtfully critique the management procedures of American business and offer a promising prescription in this invigorating study. ``It is no longer necessary or desirable for companies to organize their work around Adam Smith's division of labor,'' they state, arguing that task-oriented jobs are becoming obsolete as changes in customer bases, competition and the rate of change itself alter the marketplace. Post-industrial companies must be ``reengineered,'' which necessitates starting anew, going back to the beginning to invent a better way of accomplishing tasks. The process requires a leader with vision using information technologies, consulting closely with suppliers to reduce inventories, and empowering employees so that decision-making ``becomes part of the work.'' Hammer and Champy acknowledge that reengineering can be difficult to launch and to sustain; yet they provide clear, specific guidelines and excellent case studies. Their superb book should have strong appeal to managers and general readers alike. (May)

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