Beyond Reengineering: How the Process-Centered Organization Is Changing Our Work and Our Lives

Reengineering has captured the imagination of managers and shareholders alike, sending corporations on journeys of radical business redesign that have already begun to transfigure global industry. Yet aside from earning them improvements in their business performance, the shift into more-process-centered organizations is causing fundamental changes in the corporate world, changes that business leaders are only now beginning to understand. What will the revolutions final legacy be? Beyond Reengineering addresses this question, exploring reengineering's effects on such areas as:

Jobs: What does process-centering do to the nature of jobs? What does a process-centered workplace feel like?

Managers: What is the new role of the manager in a process-centered company?

Education: What skills are vital in the process-centered working world, and how can young or inexperienced workers prepare?

Society: What are the implications of process-centering for employment and the economy as a whole?

Investment: What are the characteristics of a successful 21st-century corporation?

An informed look at one of the most profound changes to ever sweep the corporate world, Beyond Reengineering is the business manual for the 21st century.

Discusses general business reengineering & the effect on the corporate landscape today, incl. voices from the front lines

This book unveils the business structure of the 21st century, in which professional employees fulfill broad responsibilities and are treated like the business assets they are.

Publishers Weekly

In the old-fashioned, task-oriented corporation, closely supervised drones perform isolated functions, slowly and inflexibly. By contrast, in the forward-looking, process-oriented corporation envisaged by bestselling business guru Hammer (Reengineering the Corporation), self-directed, autonomous workers who act like professionals focus on interrelated groups of tasks. Amplifying the message of his previous book, he uses case histories featuring Showtime Networks, GTE Corp., Aetna Life, American Standard, General Electric and other firms to show how companies can make the transition to a process focus. He discusses the impact of reengineering on job definition, remuneration, leadership, planning. No competitive manager can afford to miss this manual, which offers fresh insights into how to detect and zap non-value-adding busywork, how to tap workers' imagination and resourcefulness and how to turn employees from organic robots into entrepreneurial team players. $150,000 ad/promo; author tour. Translation rights: Bob Barnett Agency; U.K. rights: HarperCollins UK. (Aug.)

Dr. Michael Hammer is one of the world's foremost business thinkers. He is the originator of both reengineering and the process enterprise, ideas that have transformed the modern business world. Through his teaching and research, he works with the management teams of leading companies to bring about fundamental change in their organizations. Time magazine included him in its first list of America's twenty-five most influential individuals.