Creating the 21st Century Organization: the Metamorphosis of Oticon

Abstract

Much has been written about transforming organizations. At the heart of this activity is thenotion of Business Process Redesign (BPR), the restructuring of a firm's basic business methods.We describe some of the forces that are behind this need for major organizational change. Next,we provide an overview of BPR and raise several questions concerning its suitability as atheoretical underpinning for radical organizational transformation. We then describe thetransformation of Oticon, an international manufacturing firm with headquarters in Denmark. Wehave called this transformation a Metamorphosis because of the complete reconceptualization ofthe firm that took place. Using the example of Oticon, we speculate about the prerequisites forchange of this extent, paying particular attention to the role of technology, which has beenenabling rather than driving.