ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the content of which might be regarded as concerned with a 90s fad, is that the thinking which inspired business process re-engineering (BPR) has even more relevance today when the opportunity and need are both greater and the supporting technology more capable and mature. BPR emerged as a formal business practice in America during the 1980s and early 90s, although the term was used in the discipline of operations research as early as the 1940s. In its current incarnation, it is an essentially pragmatic approach that resulted from observation and evaluation of the efforts of several companies to re-invent themselves. BPR challenges many of the assumptions that have underpinned the way organisations have been run for the last two centuries. The Western world relies on continuous thinking, largely derived from scientific thinking. Continuous thinking is incremental, an apparently seamless, flowing approach based on small, incremental changes.
