Moving enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to the cloud: the challenge of infrastructural embeddedness

Cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions allow organizations to support and coordinate key business processes by leveraging virtualization. Nevertheless, moving ERPs to the cloud is not straightforward, and organizational cloud ERP initiatives raise multiple concerns. We conducted an in-depth systematic review of relevant research literature and identified six key concerns related to cloud ERP implementation: a) the introduction of new ERP work arrangements, launch b) the migration of legacy data, c) the assurance of compliance with extant rules and regulations for security, d) the continuous alignment between ERP functionality and business processes, e) the ongoing integration between ERPs and the rest of the organization’s application portfolio, and f) the establishment of adequate reliability levels. The identified concerns are associated with both transition management and operations supported by cloud ERPs. All the identified concerns are also related to the need to achieve infrastructural embeddedness. This need sets ERPs apart from other types of cloud-based applications, such as office automation solutions that do not have as many dependencies and exchanges with other systems and repositories within an organization’s information infrastructure. We argue that the challenge of embeddedness has different implications for organizations of different sizes, and we call for further empirical research.publishedVersio

Moving enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to the cloud: the challenge of infrastructural embeddedness

Cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions allow organizations to support and coordinate key business processes by leveraging virtualization. Nevertheless, moving ERPs to the cloud is not straightforward, and organizational cloud ERP initiatives raise multiple concerns. We conducted an in-depth systematic review of relevant research literature and identified six key concerns related to cloud ERP implementation: a) the introduction of new ERP work arrangements, launch b) the migration of legacy data, c) the assurance of compliance with extant rules and regulations for security, d) the continuous alignment between ERP functionality and business processes, e) the ongoing integration between ERPs and the rest of the organization’s application portfolio, and f) the establishment of adequate reliability levels. The identified concerns are associated with both transition management and operations supported by cloud ERPs. All the identified concerns are also related to the need to achieve infrastructural embeddedness. This need sets ERPs apart from other types of cloud-based applications, such as office automation solutions that do not have as many dependencies and exchanges with other systems and repositories within an organization’s information infrastructure. We argue that the challenge of embeddedness has different implications for organizations of different sizes, and we call for further empirical research

Moving enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to the cloud: the challenge of infrastructural embeddedness

Cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions allow organizations to support and coordinate key business processes by leveraging virtualization. Nevertheless, moving ERPs to the cloud is not straightforward, and organizational cloud ERP initiatives raise multiple concerns. We conducted an in-depth systematic review of relevant research literature and identified six key concerns related to cloud ERP implementation: a) the introduction of new ERP work arrangements, b) the migration of legacy data, c) the assurance of compliance with extant rules and regulations for security, d) the continuous alignment between ERP functionality and business processes, e) the ongoing integration between ERPs and the rest of the organization’s application portfolio, and f) the establishment of adequate reliability levels. The identified concerns are associated with both transition management and operations supported by cloud ERPs. All the identified concerns are also related to the need to achieve infrastructural embeddedness. This need sets ERPs apart from other types of cloud-based applications, such as office automation solutions that do not have as many dependencies and exchanges with other systems and repositories within an organization’s information infrastructure. We argue that the challenge of embeddedness has different implications for organizations of different sizes, and we call for further empirical research

Unpacking Agile Enterprise Architecture Innovation work practices: A Qualitative Case Study of a Railroad Company

Agile EA is the process for managing enterprise architecture modeling and redesign efforts with principles of agile methods. However, very little work has been done till date on how organizations adopt these methodological innovations such as integration of agile methods with enterprise architecture. This is problematic, because we know that organizations face stiff challenges in bringing new innovations that fundamentally disrupt their enterprise architecture. Hence we ask: How does agile EA get adopted in practice and what are the underlying mechanisms through which teams self-organize and adapt? To this end, we studied a large-scale agile EA development effort to modernize the legacy systems at a top railroad company referred to as “Alpha” (a pseudonym). Our qualitative analysis shows how multi-teams self-organize and adjust the pace of the development efforts by strategically (1) choosing different type of agile methods and (2) embedding resources across teams for increasing communications

Positively Deviant Organizational Performance and the Role of Leadership Values

Cameron cites the infusion of collaborative values and restructuring of relationships as a primary reason for the successful clean up and closure of Rocky Flats, one of U.S.’s most hazardous and controversial toxic dumps. Success was contingent upon mutual trust and respect of and between traditionally adversarial groups by adopting a mutual proactive, sharing orientation and empathetic attitudes. The true leaders in this venture shifted from a profit-first stance to changing organizational culture, ensuring that individuals (especially leaders and influencers) pursued an abundance-based vision

HOW ORGANIZATIONAL TURBULENCE SHAPES THE BROKER VISION ADVANTAGE

Research on social networks has established that those who bridge the gaps between dense social groups (i.e. structural holes) are granted a “vision advantage” compared to those who are embedded in dense groups. A common explanation for the advantage is that bridging a structural hole provides the broker with access to diverse information. What is less clear is how this process performs when the organizational context is turbulent. I propose that in a turbulent organizational context, when the organization is experiencing dramatic changes, employees benefit less from building a repertoire of diverse information and instead benefit more from adopting socially distant information. Information discussed by members of the organization which are several steps away from an employee would be more valuable in a turbulent context. Socially distant information would be more rare as people become rigid in response to threat, and it would be more relevant as local information becomes obsolete. To explore this idea, I study the case of two large organizations undergoing a merger integration. The members of the higher-status, acquiring organization experience relative stability compared to members of the target firm, who experience a great deal more uncertainty. The higher-status firm dominated the merger, the top management of the target firm was replaced, supervisory structures are changed, employees are forced to develop new routines, learn new technologies, and had to uproot their social support networks and move across the country. This case provides an opportunity to examine how two information flow mechanisms, which mediate the relationship between broker positions and individual career benefits, are altered in the presence of organizational turbulence. I measure information variance and the adoption of socially distant information of 612 organizational members by fitting a topic model on a dataset of email content covering a 14-month period immediately following the merger of two large consumer product firms. I test my hypotheses using a latent difference score model to test the impacts of increases in information variance, constraint, and adoption of socially distant information on increases in employee salary. I find that organizational turbulence alters the ways in which information flows provides benefits. Within turbulent contexts the pathways between access to diverse information and improved career outcomes are destroyed. Instead adopting socially distant information and information associated with power and status provides more benefits to the individual than incrementally improving a repertoire of diverse information. This study contributes to research on M&As, organizational change, and social network theory by expanding our understanding of the impact of organizational turbulence on the information mechanisms driving advantage in open networks

Deinstitutionalising Existing Technologies to Institutionalise Cloud Infrastructure

Cloud computing is attracting attention in business world as well as in academic research. This interest is spreading fast to different areas of demand and supply side of cloud computing. However, the decision to move to a cloud is dicey and requires lot of attention in deinstitutionalising existing organisational technical infrastructure to facilitate implementation, assimilation, routinization, and institutionalisation of cloud services. At the core of this process is as much of emphasize on unlearning as it is on learning to use cloud services. The overall aim of this research is to facilitate this process by developing theoretical and practical support for business organisations to transfer to cloud paradigm. However, this paper describes the background and the research framework that drives this research to obtain the overall objectives. This paper highlights that the process of deinstitutionalisation and reinstitutionalisation is evolutionary and nonlinear and its success depends on a number of organisational, technical, environmental, social, cultural, and other institutional factors and their mutual interactions

Digital Innovation for Financial Services Organizations: A Preliminary Consideration of Lines of Action for Organizational Practices

As respond rapidly enough. Traditional, pre-digital organizations are structured around practices in silos that enforce rules and legacy processes which result in “speedbumps” to digital innovation by slowing work and customer reaction times. Companies who have become reliant on digital innovation to improve service, such as financial services organizations, and do not adjust their organizational practices to respond to process changes may cease to exist. When considering digital innovation, a key challenge is a low level and fragmented understanding of organizational practices, even though there is an increasing number of documented benefits of transforming organizational practices. There is, therefore, a need for research to better understand organizational practices when considering digital innovation. This study responds to this call through a meta‐aggregative approach to synthesize organizational practices associated with digital transformation when considering digital innovations. The meta-aggregative approach extracted recurring practices as lines of action guided by the Technology, Organization and Environment framework from which thirteen lines of action were identified. These lines of action provide recurring organizational practices affecting digital innovation in the financial services industry that affect digital innovation

Responsible innovation in mobile journalism : Exploring professional journalists` learning and innovation processes

Denne avhandlingen handler om innovasjon i mobiljournalistikk, og utforsker hvordan profesjonelle TV- og avisjournalister bruker smarttelefoner som journalistisk produksjonsverktøy. I tillegg reflekteres kritisk over utfordringer som kan knyttes til at journalister satser i sitt arbeid på datateknologi som ikke bare integrerer flere risikoteknologier men bygger på infrastrukturer som er optimalisert for omfattende dataekstraksjon og kommersielle overvåkingspraksiser. Det overordnete spørsmålet som søkes besvart i avhandlingen er: Hva er ansvarlig innovasjon i mobiljournalistikk? For å finne svar på forskningsspørsmålet kombineres empiriske tilnærminger og analytisk-teoretiske perspektiver. Innovasjon forstås her som en kompleks sosiokulturell læringsprosess der ´ansvarlig innovasjon´ pekes ut som en normativ meta-kategori. I den empiriske delen i avhandlingen undersøkes profesjonelle journalisters konkrete lærings- og innovasjonsprosesser. Basert på etnografi-inspirerte metoder som deltakende observasjon, dybdeintervjuer og uformelle samtaler belyser den empiriske delen av avhandlingen innovasjon i mobiljournalistikk gjennom to ulike casestudier. I den første casen utforskes et globalt pioner-nettverk som fremstår som en viktig kollektiv aktør i innovativ mobiljournalistikk. I den andre casen undersøkes et konkret trainingsarrangement for profesjonelle avisjournalister som ledd i en omfattende innovasjonsprosess i en tradisjonell medieorganisasjon. Den analytisk-teoretiske delen av avhandlingen tar for seg meta-konseptet `ansvarlig innovasjon´ og belyser kritisk den politiske økonomien knyttet til lærings- og kunnskapsutvikling. Ved hjelp av Zuboffs (2019) teori om overvåkningskapitalisme fokuserer denne delen av avhandlingen på større og mer langsiktige samfunnskonsekvenser knyttet til bruk av mobilteknologi i journalistikk. Ved å peke på ulike risikoer ved uregulerte former for datainnsamling og utfordringer knyttet til privatisering av kunnskap og kunnskapsproduksjon omhandler den teoretisk-analytiske delen hva som står på spill for journalister, medieorganisasjoner og samfunnet i sin helhet når mobilteknologi blir tatt ukritisk i bruk. Det konkluderes med at en uansvarlig og risikofylt bruk av mobilteknologi og relaterte infrastrukturer ikke tegner et bilde av mobiljournalistikk som en demokratiserende kraft (og tidsriktig produksjonsmåte) men heller en praksis som kan bidra til å undergrave demokratiets fundamenter gjennom omfattende dataekstraksjon og kommersielt motiverte overvåkningspraksiser. For å møte komplekse risikoer ved bruk av teknologisk innovasjon i mobiljournalistikk og å kunne finne konstruktive løsninger diskuteres det nye europeiske forsknings- og innovasjonsrammeverket Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) som sikter mot grunnleggende endringer i nåværende innovasjons- og forskningspraksis. Med utgangspunkt i idéer og metoder fra RRI foreslås ulike handlingsopsjoner på individ-, organisasjonps- og samfunnsnivå samt anbefalinger hva `ansvarlig innovasjon i mobiljournalistikk` innebærer. Et overordnet mål med avhandlingen er å bidra i, og berike, den akademiske og offentlige debatten ved å gi konkrete innblikk i profesjonelle journalisters læringssituasjoner og innovasjonsprosesser og gjennom den rette oppmerksomheten mot fundamentale utfordringer ved bruk av kompleks datateknologi og infrastrukturer i samfunnet.This thesis examines innovation in the field of mobile journalism by examining how professional broadcast and print journalists learn about and adopt mobile technology for their journalistic practice and by investigating critically the side effects from journalists’ adoption of mobile computing platforms, encompassing highly convergent and different risk technologies. The overarching research question that guided this work asked: What is responsible innovation in mobile journalism? To find answers to this overarching research endeavor, I applied an approach that combines empirical and analytical-conceptual perspectives. Innovation is conceptualized in this work as a complex sociocultural process of learning, and responsible innovation is viewed as a meta-category of innovation. The empirical part sets out to understand actual learning practices and innovation processes by examining how professional print and broadcast journalists learn to adopt mobile technology and innovate through mobile journalism in different social settings. Based on a qualitative approach that applies methods such as long-term observations, participant observation, in-depth interviews, and informal conversations, the empirical part of the thesis provides insight into professional journalists’ individual motivations and experiences, organizational and new collective approaches to innovation, and learning processes. The conceptual part of the thesis examines the meta-concept of “responsible innovation” more closely by applying a critical perspective of political economy on learning and knowledge processes. Viewed through the lens of Zuboff’s (2019) surveillance capitalism theory, this part of the thesis draws attention to broader societal consequences attached to the adoption of mobile technology in journalism. By uncovering emerging risks and challenges from unregulated dataveillance and privatization of knowledge, this part demonstrates what is at stake if mobile technology is irresponsibly adopted by a risk group – in this case, journalists – and how, from this perspective, mobile journalism fails to emerge as a democratic force, thereby undermining the fundaments of democracy. To counteract the identified and complex risks from comprehensive data extraction and dataveillance that accompany journalists and media organizations’ adoption of and innovation in mobile journalism, ideas and methods from the European Union’s Responsible Research and Innovation framework are suggested as a possible approach. This is specified by outlining different implications from the identified risks on individual, organizational, and societal levels, and by making suggestions as to what “responsible innovation” in mobile journalism would encompass in the context of this thesis. This thesis aims to build on existing academic discussions through enriching debates in the mobile journalism field by providing insights into professional journalists’ concrete learning and innovation processes, as well as directing attention toward individual, organizational, and societal risks attached to uncritical adoption of a complex and pervasive computing platform in journalism practice and innovation in the field.Doktorgradsavhandlin