Taken from critiques on Business Process Reengineering (BPR) from Wikipedia
The most frequent and harsh critique against BPR concerns the strict focus on efficiency and technology and the disregard of people in the organization that is subjected to a reengineering initiative. Very often, the label BPR was used for major workforce reductions. Thomas Davenport, an early BPR proponent, stated that:
“When I wrote about “business process redesign” in 1990, I explicitly said that using it for cost reduction alone was not a sensible goal. And consultants Michael Hammer and James Champy, the two names most closely associated with reengineering, have insisted all along that layoffs shouldn’t be the point. But the fact is, once out of the bottle, the reengineering genie quickly turned ugly.”
Michael Hammer similarly admitted that:
“I wasn’t smart enough about that. I was reflecting my engineering background and was insufficient appreciative of the human dimension. I’ve learned that’s critical.”
“insufficient appreciative of the human dimension”: I think I suffer from this at times, many more than not
The Wheat Field 