Using a positivist case research methodology to test a theory about IT-enabled business process redesign

We derive a process theory, the “technology-oriented theory of business process redesign,” from the business process reengineering (BPR) literature and test it in a positivist case study of a corporation that implemented BPR. Our evidence refutes the theory. The future direction we suggest for researchers and practitioners is to adopt, from the beginning, an orientation that is not technocentric or overly technological, but gives equal consideration to social dimensions and the interactions between the social and the technological.

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