Business process reengineering (BPR) continues to sweep across Europe with fervour. The rhetoric of radical performance improvement is too great to ignore, given the state of many European companies. In many cases the reengineering drive has been orchestrated by American companies either moving into Europe or implementing strategies dictated from their US base. Yet reengineering is essentially an American concept, packaged so as to appeal to that country's psyche. This article examines the transfer of culturally-grounded management techniques, in this case BPR, making specific reference to the German business and cultural context.