THE MANAGEMENT OF CHANGE BUSINESS VOCABULARY IN USE (ADVANCED)

 

BUSINESS VOCABULARY IN USE (ADVANCED) 14. THE MANAGEMENT OF CHANGE

 

A Business process re-engineering In 1990s, business process re-engineering, or BPR, emerged. Inspired by a book by Michael Hammer and James Champy1, consultants told companies not to bother with incremental improvements, but to abolish everything, go back to the drawing board and redesign all the business processes involved in producing something, whether a product or a service. They said that this redesign should be: B The benefits of BPR For its supporters, these are some of the strengths of BPR: a. leadership: strong leadership is important; changes are imposed from above; there is visible commitment from leaders for change. b. people management: fewer management layers mean larger, more challenging jobs c. policy and strategy: clearer fit between the organization and its declared purpose and goals EXERCISES 14.1 Gordon Greer, production manager at a car components manufacturer (see Unit 10) is talking about a car company that he supplies called Autoco. Replace the underlined words and phrases with expressions from A opposite. Pay attention to the grammatical context. ‘One example of (1) restructuring that I know was quite (2) basic: Autoco, one of our customers, wanted to simplify its supplier payment system. Before, there were three documents relating to every delivery. We got a purchase order from Autoco, a delivery note accompanied the goods when they were delivered to them, and then we sent an invoice. There were 300 employees in their accounts department. Within the department there were sub-departments, each dealing with payments for different groups of suppliers, and each with its own head. 14.2 Look at these criticisms (1-6) that have been made of BPR. Match each criticism to one of its claimed benefits (a-f) in B opposite. 1. Results may be harmed by the chaos and confusion that BPR brings to the organization. 2. People can be left demotivated and demoralized by radical change. 3. Smooth, gradual, incremental introduction of completely new processes is not possible.

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