Head- The Rise of the Reengineers

                One of this week’s readings, “The Rise of the Reengineers,” came from the fourth chapter of Simon Head’s book called The New Ruthless Economy, published in 2003, and then again in March of 2005. Head is a senior and associate fellow at the Rothermere American Institute in Oxford since 2005 and has also been a significant contributor to the New York Review of Books since 1973. Head also has another book titled, Mindless: Why Smarter Machines are Making Dumber Humans, that talks about how the world is becoming a better place for computers and a worse place for humans.

                In this chapter of the book, Head starts out by talking about William Henry Leffingwell’s scientific management, also known as Taylorism, beliefs. Leffingwell wrote many books following World War I talking about how the productivity of American clerks, messengers, and typists could be improved using the techniques of scientific management. He thought that if tasks were broken down into simpler forms and people did them enough times, that production would be enhanced. With a few other principles, such as the exception principle, installed in the theory, the employees would be able to make quick decisions, complete their tasks with the greatest efficiency, and be the most productive they could be.

                Later on in the chapter, Head introduces the term “reengineering” which has become a synonym for scientific management. Reengineering was first talked about in the early 1990’s. Similar to scientific management, it looks at the task at hand, breaks it down, and finds ways to speed up the process. Head goes on to mention some of today’s leading reengineers such as Michael Hammer and James Champy, authors of the book Reengineering the Corporation.

                Another man that Head introduces is Thomas Davenport, who provided a sort of framework for modern day reengineering. The business process, which is broken down into managerial and operational tasks, provides a separation of responsibilities that certain people should have. Managerial tasks are those that involve important decision making including strategy, planning, and budgeting. Operational tasks are the everyday tasks carried out by your normal employees.

                Head states that there are three chief aspects of the use of information technology and a reengineering tool. The first aspect is how the information technology impacts the process that is being reengineered. The second aspect deals with changing the configuration of work. Instead of splitting up the task or process into smaller jobs, one employee is trained to do the whole job efficiently. The last aspect talks about the relationship between employees and their managers. Hammer and Champy said, “With reengineering, managers stop acting like supervisors and start becoming more like coaches.”

                In the critiques that I read, most people agreed with the words of Head. I personally thought that the ideas portrayed in this article are accurate with how modern day jobs are. For factory jobs, where a big process is broken down into multiple line jobs, people are trained to do one specific job multiple times over. In bigger corporations, people tend to have multiple responsibilities and are asked to complete all of them.