Effects of ES-enabled standardization and integration on business process agility

Agility has become a key organizational capability today as businesses face an uncertain and volatile environment. Enterprise systems, a key component of IT infrastructure in a majority of orrganizations today, have delivered cost efficiencies, control and consistent execution. Using a case study approach, this research reports on the investigation of the influence of enterprise system-enabled environment on business process agility. According to study, integration, standardization, best practices and process orientation, the key characteristics of ES-enabled environment have mixed and varying effect on business process agility and that is dependent upon the extent and type of standardization and integration implemented in the organization and the nature of business processes. Tight coupling of systems, structures and processes resulting from ES implementation restricts a firm’s ability to reconfigure and deploy business processes. Study noted the positive effect of process orientation on organizational ability to identify, reconfigure and deploy business processes. The study found that the best practices embedded in an enterprise system do not have any direct influence on process agility. Recognizing that it is not after all necessary for all processes to be agile, study pointed out some of the challenges in identification, configuration and effective deployment of agile processes

Enterprise Systems and Organizational Agility: A Review of the Literature and Conceptual Framework

The impact of enterprise systems (ES) on organizational agility (OA) is an under-researched area. Given that most organizations are heavily investing on ES infrastructure and the increasing demand for agility, the lack of research on ES and OA is a critical oversight. This article reviews previous literature on information systems in general and ES in particular and organizational agility. The article offers a comprehensive and deepened perspective toward the existing discourses on ES-enabled organizational agility. Using insights from the dynamic capability theory, we propose a conceptual framework that highlights how organizations can exploit ESs to improve their agility in two significant ways―by creating and constantly developing an ES-enabled sensing and responding capability. We also argue that the quality of the ES competence provides the necessary technical and business platform for deploying and exploiting ES in building and rebuilding sensing and responding capabilities. The proposed framework sheds light on three important missing factors in the realm of IT-enabled organizational agility, namely ES competency, the alignment between ES-enabled sensing and responding capability, and environmental dynamism. Our theorizing makes an original contribution to ES and IS research by extending previous works of IT-enabled organizational agility by introducing the three constructs previously mentioned

Inter Organizational System flexibility and standardization in innovative services: complementarity, opposition or independence?

This paper examines the orientations of information systems (IOS) between characteristics of flexibility and standardization in the specific case of service innovations. More specifically it investigates the often taken for a fact tension between standardization and flexibility in this context. We explore this issue based on a case study drawn from the banking industry. Evidence is based on data collected over a significant period of time. Results show that in an innovative BPO, standardization and flexibility relationships depend on the level of analysis of the information system and involve a large number of elements that have been only partially considered in the literature

Level of Harmonization and ERP Architecture in Multinational Corporations

While one-site, one-instance implementation was the common practice during the infancy of ERP systems, the growing business trend towards globalization and the advancement of ERP and telecommunication technology have increased the popularity of centralized single-instance ERP systems among multinational corporations. The ERP distribution decision in MNCs has been mainly associated with the corporate strategy and governance structure. As global ERP deployment benefits mainly come from business consolidation, and as there are significant costs and risks associated with centralized ERP implementations, this paper investigates the influence of level of harmonization in the choice of ERP architecture in MNCs. Though the findings indicate a negative relation between the level of harmonization and a centralized ERP systems’ effectiveness, the study identifies the choice of ERP architecture to be more directly affected by the factors prohibiting further divergence, namely the corporate business process governance structure and the degree of similarity of its business models

Cross-Organizational and Cross-Border IS/IT Collaboration: A Literature Review

The topic of collaboration in cross-organizational and cross-border settings is an emerging subfield of information systems research. This paper presents a compressive literature review of 52 research papers, published from 2000 to 2007, in four leading journals. The focus of the analysis are topics of investigation, sources of data, and the underlying theories. The results indicate that most of the research still focuses on a limited number of technical issues related to inter-organizational systems adoption. The identified research gaps which represent promising research opportunities are discussed

TANGIBLE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY INFRASTRUCTURE ASSETS AND ORGANIZATIONAL AGILITY: AN INVESTIGATION OF MANUFACTURING SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTERPRISES

This paper investigates the role of tangible IT infrastructure assets –the portfolio of specific applications to which a firm endows itself – in enabling organizational agility and business performance in the context of SMEs. Building upon past literature, we regroup tangible IT infrastructure assets into three categories: IT for flexibility, IT for innovation, and IT for integration. Each category includes a series of specific technologies (i.e., CNC, CAD and ERP). We theorize that tangible IT infrastructure assets positively influence organizational agility and business performance. We employ a survey methodology to test the proposed hypotheses. One hundred and twenty-six manufacturing SMEs completed the survey. The results support the hypothesized relations. This research complements previous research that has studied intangible abstract constructs as antecedents of organizational agility, it confirms the results of past research examining the agility-business performance link, and it addresses the scarcity of strategic IS research in SMEs

Software Development Process Ambidexterity and Project Performance: A Coordination Cost-Effectiveness View

Software development process ambidexterity (SDPA) is the ability to demonstrate both process alignment and process adaptability simultaneously. Realizing process ambidexterity has recently been suggested as an effective approach to improving the performance of software development (SD) projects. To understand the mechanisms underlying the effects of ambidexterity, we focus in this study on the mediating effects of coordination, one of the most important activity in SD projects. Specifically, we hypothesize a mediating effect of coordination costs and coordination effectiveness on the relationship between SDPA and project performance. We conducted a quantitative study involving 104 SD projects across 10 firms to test the model. The results strongly suggest that the positive relationship between SDPA and project performance is negatively mediated by coordination costs and positively mediated by coordination effectiveness. We validate our research model with a case study in an organization employing several hundred IT professionals and derive several practical implications on this basis

TOWARD MANAGEMENT INNOVATION FOR IT-ENABLED OPERATIONAL AGILITY: A DEPENDENCIES PERSPECTIVE

Abstract Firms make large investments in enterprise I