Business process reengineering (BPR) has been receiving attention from industries as well as the academic
community, because it is likely to change management practice and working processes in organisations
in the future. However it is commonly agreed that BPR is important but also problematic. In this
chapter we explore the principles and assumptions of BPR and identify the factors affecting its successes
and failures. Especially we highlight some major debates currently found in the literature of
BPR. These debates include the definitions used to describe business processes and BPR, the scale of
the changes involved in BPR, and the significance and role of information technology (IT) in BPR, especially
IT systems. As the main theme of this thesis is applying EM to BPR, it is essential to understand
some factors which cause BPR projects failure due to the poor design of the supporting systems under
the conventional paradigm