David Harvey's postmodernity and corporate reengineering concepts

David Harvey's Postmodernity as an Elaboration of Hammer and Champy's Corporate Reengineering

The inception of free trade which has opened international borders to unfettered consumer interchange, the vast proliferation of telecommunication and high speed internet technologies and a general perception of the world as a global market place have all served to change considerably the parameters of corporate activity. The transition from the 20th century to the 21st has ranged from tumultuous to downright devastating for so many companies. In the 2003 version of a text by Hammer & Champy, the authors make the case that survival as a corporation in the 21st century, therefore, requires significant practical and theoretical change. This is a position which is supplemented by the 1990 text by Harvey, which argues that there are clear cut socioeconomic and cultural motives behind the stubbornness of so many waning companies. Hammer & Champy contend at the center of their text that the world has entered the phase after the long era of industrialization which helped to elevate the United States to its unparalleled level of success in the world. In many ways, they argue, the types of corporations descendent from and modeled after American industrialization-seen largely as some of the more remarkably successful and widespread organizations in economic history-are either extinct or deeply endangered. The authors argue that "advanced technologies, the disappearance of boundaries between national markets, and the altered expectations of customers who now have more choices than ever before have combined to make the goals, methods, and basic organizing principles of the classical corporation sadly obsolete." (Hammer & Champy, 13) For so many corporations that are no longer with as, this would be an all but impossible-to-meet demand to completely reconsider ways of understanding markets and organizational or consumer behavior. Reengineering the corporation would require a way of philosophically understanding the corporation as entering a new phase. The synonymous nature of industrialization and modernity lends facile consideration of the relationship between the Hammer & Champy text and the argument underscoring the Harvey text. Here, in its focus on post-modern behavior and organization, the Harvey text actually provides us with some compelling parallels to current corporate needs. For instance, as Hammer & Champy decry the clunky and outdated ineptitude of bureaucratic and centralized corporate orientation, Harvey provides an elaborating analogy to the perception of urban development. In the post-modern perspective which is removed a step from much of the suffering inherently relevant to the preceding era of industrialization, "the city was more like a theatre, a series of stages upon which individuals could work their own distinctive magic while performing a multiplicity of roles." (Harvey, 5) To the perceptive reader, this lands as a pointed endorsement of an organizational orientation in which individual strengths and an energizing company culture align to create a remarkable human landscape. With this in mind, we consider that the Hammer & Champy text is designed to strip corporate planners of their preconceptions as to how an organization should be run. Debunking the myth that persistence in these traditional modes will return results, the text points to many aspects of the corporation today which appear to run aground of a changing world. Many of these misconceptions revolve on interactions with members of the organization, down to such crucial and defining details as how compensation and incentive are rewarding. The text undermines the conventional thinking that has been so damaging to so many corporations once of unimpeachable merit. As to the waning value of conventional corporate structural tendencies, Hammer & Champy remark for example that "paying people based on their position in the organization-the higher up they are, the more money they make-is inconsistent with the principles of reengineering. Traditional point schemes, in which the size of a person's salary is a function of the size of his or her budget, also don't fit in a process- oriented environment." (Hammer & Champty, 78) Indeed, the authors here identify one of the core principles to a changed global marketplace, where the nature of supply chain processes, product delivery or service rendering will have a dominant impact on how the bottom line is decided. Within this context, the individual is to be assessed and rewarded not according status in the company, but according to the value created by the individual. (Hammer & Champy, 78) The Harvey text provides a yet more nuanced perspective on this idea, if not one shrouded by negative disposition. Indeed, we find that the postmodernist text is watchfully uncomfortable with the implications of capitalism to this proper valuation of creative efforts and internal ingenuity. Instead, Harvey identifies the current structure as one put in place not necessarily to drive an organization to its utmost potention for excellence, but to use it as a means to reinforcing already existent class divisions. The focus on labor rights movements and the philosophical positions volleyed on either side thereof offer a compelling lens through which to consider the implications of that which is demanded by the reengineered corporation. Harvey's discourse on the impact of industrialization points to the moment at which "came into being 'the familiar landscape of industrial capitalism, with the time-sheet, the timekeeper, the informers and the fines.' The battle over minutes and seconds, over the pace and intensity of work schedules, over the working life, over the working week and day, over the working year, has been, and continues to be, right royally fought." (Harvey, 231) This idea of the corporation as an internal battlefield where those with higher earning opportunities and positions of authority exploit and subjugate those with lower wage jobs is, of course, a deeply destructive and self-defeatist way to orient an organization, at least in an era where labor rights and civil liberties are regularly pursued and, in some instances, institutionally protected. The Harvey text seems to center on this understanding that as a culture, we have arrived at a point where capitalism's inherent imbalances have caused exceedingly problematic rifts and cultural shortcomings within those corporations that have failed to evolve. Going to lengths to note that social resistance in the face of overwhelming corporate power is often a vain struggle akin to windmill tilting, Harvey is nonetheless moved by the same point of fact as are Hammer & Champy, that the modern corporation absolutely must change its total identity and orientation if it is to survive a more sweeping social transition based on the economic merit of more democratic intra-organizational policy. In the intercession between the two texts in question, we are given a practical discussion with deeply philosophical undertones. As Hammer & Champy provide the business-theory perspective on that which must be done to help organizations prepare for already occurring shifts in corporate priorities, Harvey provides a foreboding discussion on the ideological and socio-economic obstacles which detain so many organizations in a place of willful regression. Where the two texts meet, there is an overarching recommendation for organizations to engage practices which are more open, honesty, fair and ethical. Works Cited