Michael Hammer, Business Writer, 60, NY TImes

[DGH]

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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/05/business/05hammer.html?ref=obituaries

Michael Hammer, Business Writer, Dies at 60

By DENNIS HEVESI [New York Times]

Michael Hammer, the co-author of a best-selling book, "Reengineering the
Corporation," which some business experts say significantly influenced the
way many corporations have reorganized their workplaces by focusing on the
expertise of their employees, died Wednesday [September 3, 2008] in Boston
[Massachusetts]. He was 60 and lived in Newton, Massachusetts.

The cause was complications of a brain hemorrhage, said Joseph Tischler, a
family friend.

Dr. Hammer wrote the book with James Champy; after it was published by
Harper Business in 1993, it was on The New York Times nonfiction paperback
best-seller list for 41 weeks. Its influence led to Dr. Hammer's inclusion,
in 1996, on Time magazine's list of "America's 25 Most Influential People."

"Reengineering the Corporation" promoted the idea of simplifying and
reorganizing business departments by having the workers break down their
activities into logical, bite-size pieces, then take a "clean sheet"
approach to reassembling their work for greater efficiency and productivity.

"Managers have to switch from supervisory roles to acting as facilitators,
as enablers, and as people whose jobs are the development of people and
their skills so that those people will be able to perform value-adding
processes themselves," the book said. At the same time, it said, "those
empowered to make the changes at lower levels must know they have the
support of top management, or change won't occur."

By challenging traditional assumptions about the division of labor, Dr.
Hammer often said, the book called for "the undoing of the Industrial
Revolution."

Stephen P. Kaufman, a senior lecturer at the Harvard Business School, said
in an interview Thursday that after the book's release, "there was a large
flurry of re-engineering projects, led both by consulting firms that would
teach the process to companies and by the companies themselves." Mr. Kaufman
added that he "would not quite call it a revolution, but a very useful tool
in the tool bag of effective managers."

Time magazine saw it differently - and laced with an element of controversy.

In its 1996 profile of Dr. Hammer, it said his book "set in motion a
revolution the likes of which hadn't been seen since Henry Ford introduced
the assembly line. Like most revolutions, this one has been extremely messy.
Such huge firms as Procter & Gamble, Xerox and American Standard have
successfully taken a Hammer to their structures."

"At the same time," the profile continued, "re-engineering has become
synonymous with less elegant forms of reorganization, notably downsizing, in
which C.E.O.'s fire workers wholesale to make a company more 'efficient.'"

Dr. Hammer and Mr. Champy were deeply concerned about the misuse of their
premise.

"It is astonishing to me the extent to which the term re-engineering has
been hijacked, misappropriated and misunderstood," Dr. Hammer told Time,
saying that ideally, re-engineering should promote greater production and
create more jobs.

Michael Gartner Hammer was born in Annapolis, Md., on April 13, 1948, the
only child of Henry and Helen Hammer, who had arrived from Poland after
surviving the Nazi concentration camps. Henry Hammer was a rabbi.

Dr. Hammer earned his bachelor's degree in math in 1968, a master's degree
in electrical engineering in 1970, and a doctorate in computer science in
1973, all at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After graduating, he
taught computer science at M.I.T.

In 1987, he became a management consultant, work that started his thinking
and research for "Reengineering the Corporation." He wrote three other
books: "The Reengineering Revolution," "Beyond Reengineering," and "The
Agenda." He also wrote articles for publications including The Harvard
Business Review, The Economist and The Sloan Management Review.

Dr. Hammer is survived by his wife of 35 years, the former Phyllis Thurm;
three daughters, Jessie, Alison and Dana; and a son, David.

"I'm saddened and offended by the idea that companies exist to enrich their
owners," he once wrote. "That is the very least of their roles; they are far
more worthy, more honorable, and more important than that. Without the vital
creative force of business, our world would be impoverished beyond
reckoning."