PAWS: towards a participatory approach to business process reengineering

Companies normally hire external consultants to carry out their business process re-engineering. While this can be simple and efficient in the short term, it may not be convenient in the mid and long term. A low level of workers' involvement with a consequent resistance to changes, and a continuous dependency on external consultancy are the main drawbacks. We propose an alternative approach to BPR in which company workers play an active and important role re-designing the organization's processes in a cooperative style. The method includes stepwise refinement and is expected to generate better results than the traditional approach.