Restorying Reengineering

Abstract

The authors deconstruct reengineering as an ideology inscribed in discourse of storytelling and metaphor used to justify the displacement of workers. The deconstruction unmasks reengineering as a false duality with bureaucracy, and in the end, just another reinvention of Adam Smith's division of labor. It is yet another chapter in the story of the displacement of labor by machines, especially computers, in the continuing industrial—now information—revolution. Reengineering's creator and principal salesperson, Michael Hammer, uses stories and metaphors of medicine, warfare, and revolution that script the fate of disposable workers. Disposable workers is restoried and sold as a way for American business to achieve profit, quality, and global competitiveness. The authors end by offering some postmodern alternatives.