Harvey's Postmodernity and Hammer & Champy's Corporate Reengineering

Introduction: Corporate Change in a Post-Industrial World

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 marketplace have all considerably changed 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 edition of their landmark text, Hammer and Champy make the case that survival as a corporation in the 21st century requires significant practical and theoretical change. This position is supplemented by Harvey's 1990 text, which argues that there are clear socioeconomic and cultural motives behind the stubbornness of so many waning companies.

Hammer and Champy contend at the center of their text that the world has entered a phase after the long era of industrialization that helped elevate the United States to its unparalleled level of global success. In many ways, they argue, the types of corporations descended from and modeled after American industrialization — seen largely as some of the most 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, p. 13). For so many corporations that are no longer with us, this would represent an all but impossible demand to completely reconsider their understanding of markets and organizational or consumer behavior. Reengineering the corporation requires a philosophical understanding of the organization as entering a new phase.

The Postmodern City as Organizational Analogy

The synonymous nature of industrialization and modernity lends itself readily to a consideration of the relationship between the Hammer and Champy text and the argument underpinning Harvey's work. In its focus on postmodern behavior and organization, the Harvey text provides compelling parallels to current corporate needs. For instance, as Hammer and Champy decry the clunky and outdated ineptitude of bureaucratic and centralized corporate orientation, Harvey provides an elaborating analogy drawn from the perception of urban development. In the postmodern perspective — one removed a step from much of the suffering inherent in 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, p. 5). To the perceptive reader, this serves as a pointed endorsement of an organizational orientation in which individual strengths and an energizing company culture align to create a remarkable human landscape.

Rethinking Compensation and Individual Value

With this in mind, the Hammer and Champy text is designed to strip corporate planners of their preconceptions about how an organization should be run. Debunking the myth that persistence in traditional modes will continue to return results, the text points to many aspects of today's corporation that appear to run aground of a changing world. Many of these misconceptions revolve around interactions with members of the organization, down to such crucial and defining details as how compensation and incentive are structured. The text undermines the conventional thinking that has proved so damaging to many corporations once of unimpeachable merit.

As to the waning value of conventional corporate structural tendencies, Hammer and 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 & Champy, p. 78). The authors here identify one of the core principles of 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 to status in the company, but according to the value created by that individual (Hammer & Champy, p. 78).

References

Harvey, D. (1990). The Condition of Postmodernity. Blackwell Publishing.

Hammer, M., & Champy, J. (2003). Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution (Revised and updated ed.). Harper Business.