A cross-national comparison of the adoption of BPR: an interactive perspective

Business process reengineering (BPR) was developed as a new idea which, it was suggested, would revolutionise the corporation and give it a major competitive advantage. Rather than continue the debate about whether BPR is `good´ or `bad´, the focus in this paper is on understanding how the concept of BPR, however defined, has been diffused across European firms. The results from a survey of firms in four countries (UK, France, Netherlands and Sweden) support an interactive perspective of the diffusion process with the rate of adoption of BPR related to both structural characteristics of the firm and the actions of individual members. In addition, there were differences across the four countries in the extent of adoption of BPR. It is argued that the interactive perspective can be usefully extended to include institutional differences at the national level, which also influence the diffusion of innovation