ABSTRACT
The genesis of the book can be traced to a telephone call from Gordon Steven to David Preece, during late 1992. At the time Gordon was working for Bass Taverns, and was about to become a leading member of the Change Team which the company was establishing; David Preece was (and, indeed, still is) a lecturer at the University of Portsmouth. It went something like this (after the usual pleasantries): GORDON: Dave, I think you might be interested in getting involved in
researching a change initiative which is about to begin in the company. I’m on the Change Team, and you would be able to work with me as the project develops…
DAVID: You’ve got my interest, please tell me more. GORDON: Well, it’s very early days at the moment, but it looks like BPR
(Business Process Re-engineering), organizational restructuring, technical change and quality management will be all part of it.
