The consultants’ offensive: reengineering – from fad to technique

Business process reengineering has tended to be seen as a management fashion and the brainchild of the gurus who popularised it. Yet this overlooks the role of consultants in the spread of BPR and the system itself as a specific technique of change management. In fact BPR played a significant role in the push for new business in management consultancy and has become integral to an armoury of consultant tools. This article explores reengineering as a consultancy solution in the context of the external expert’s distinctive claims on knowledge, and argues that this approach reveals new insights into both reengineering and the consultancy process.