Project Delta, the name given to the business process reengineering (BPR) effort at Boston College, began in 1996. Motivated by a crisis of aspiration rather than one of financial duress, Project Delta was prompted by senior management's vision of the strategic and organizational changes that they believed would be necessary to improve the University's competitive advantage going into the next millennium.; The framework for this study lies within the scope of Project Delta at Boston College, specifically the phase I implementations of the new Student Services and Local Service Centers organizations. It begins by looking at the principles and practices of business process reengineering, assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the model and determining its overall effectiveness as a model for organizational change. Based on the weaknesses identified in the reengineering model, the study then focuses on the organization development literature, specifically in the areas of change management, leadership, communication, and participation, and puts forth a set of propositions in support of a more holistic approach to organizational change.; Using a multiple case study approach, these propositions are tested against the two Project Delta initiatives, focusing on the planning, redesign, implementation and post-implementation phases of the projects, in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the propositions in support of a more holistic model of organizational change. Findings include an assessment of the success of each of the two implementations and conclusions are drawn about the effectiveness of the propositions to provide a more holistic framework within which to implement and sustain organizational change than reengineering alone. The implications of this study for Boston College and other institutions are discussed and recommendations are made for future research in this area.
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