BUSINESS PROCESS REENGINEERING – THE ROLE OF HUMAN RESOURCE FUNCTION: A COMPREHENSIVE REVIEW OF LITERATURE

Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) is the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve remarkable improvements in critical measures of performance such as cost, quality, service, and speed. In the Banking industry, BPR means transforming processes and procedures to empower the bank with the human resources, technologies, business solutions and innovations that enhance its competitive advantage. There is no doubt about the critical role which Information technology (IT) plays in the success of BPR. Along with that, studying the related human resource issues of resistance to change and the perception of the impact of BPR on their jobs is attracting the attention of the academicians and practitioners. Research is increasingly giving importance to using effective change management techniques and treating human factors at par with IT to improve the success ratio of BPR led changes. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the past and shed light on the future scope of the role of the human resource function in BPR in banks. This is achieved through a review of literature published covering the period from the 1990s to 2018. This paper reviews the literature under the main fields of concept and evolution of BPR, the scope of BPR in banks, BPR and HR coexistence and the change management challenge. Finally, gaps in literature have been identified and suggestions given for future research opportunities.