Reengineering the Corporation by Michael Hammer and James Champy Nicholas Brealey $288 IF American business is in crisis, a point on which at this distance I express no opinion, then there is one group which is still working flat out on solving it: the theorists.
I had lost count of the number of suggestions for saving management from whatever ails it, but there is a list in this book: ''management by objectives, diversification, Theory X, zero-based budgeting, value chain analysis, decentralisation, quality circles, 'excellence', restructuring, portfolio management, management by walking around, matrix management, intrapreneuring, or one-minute managing . . .'' The American manager is buried in books. An interesting symptom of this is the flourishing market in ''abridged versions'' for those who want to say they have read everything. Also a company will sell you business books on tape so you can listen while driving.
Hammer and Champy say (and who will argue?) that the results of all this are disappointing. American businesses in general do not appear to enjoy any particular advantage over those in places where more is left to instinct and guesswork.
So they look deeper. The problem is not in management skills as such; it is in the basic structure: the way the work is organised.
This goes right back to Adam Smith and the legendary pin factory in which a few could out-produce many by specialising in one task each.
This pin factory was the great paradigm of modern industrial society. Output could be increased by dividing up the work. Cars were produced by having 1,000 people add one part each.