Sidestepping the IT Artifact, Scrapping the IS Silo, and Laying Claim to Systems in Organizations

The IT artifact and debates about the core of the IS field received a lot of attention in the last several years. This paper is a response to Benbasat and Zmud\u27s June 2003 MISQ paper The Identity Crisis within the IS Discipline: Defining and Communicating the Discipline\u27s Core Properties, which argues that the IT artifact and its immediate nomological net constitutes a natural ensemble of entities, structures, and processes that serves to bind together the IS subdisciplines and to communicate the distinctive nature of the IS discipline. This paper starts by examining the meaning of IT artifact and concluding that this term is too unclear to serve as a basic concept for delineating the field. Next it examines and disputes aspects of Benbasat and Zmud\u27s prescription for being more faithful to the discipline\u27s core. It suggests that their vision of tighter focus on variables intimately related to the IT artifact creates problems and provides few of the benefits of an alternative vision centered on systems in organizations. This alternative vision provides an understandable umbrella for most existing IS research and treats the discipline\u27s diversity as a strength rather a weakness. It provides a rationale for building on current knowledge and expertise, exploiting the discipline\u27s areas of competitive advantage in academia and business, defusing the IS discipline\u27s identity crisis, and helping increase its long-term contributions to academia, business, and society

Competing in the Digital Economy?: The Dynamics and Impacts of B2B E-commerce on the South African Manufacturing Sector

ICTs, B2B e-commerce, manufacturing sector, South Africa

Information systems failure: A business-led knowledge requirements framework for modelling business requirements

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.Our work will be mainly concerned with improving the crucial first stage (the requirements stage) of any system development methodology in order to improve requirements. A framework has been developed, called "knowledge requirements framework (KRF)" to help customers and system developers bridge the knowledge and understanding gaps at the initial requirements stage of the Information Technology System (ITS) development process. Unclear business requirements, mismatch of knowledge and understanding are among the major factors that contributes to some ITS failures worldwide. The aim is to capture functional requirements at the initial stage of the system development process and to integrate systems and people use them in the development process. Multi-surveys are conducted, capture and highlight the criteria of initial requirements exactness and executability. Knowledge and understanding gaps, which occur in the development process, are described. These gaps constitute the problem at the invisible architecture in the initial requirements stage, as they expose mismatch of both knowledge and understanding problems (Requirements/Specifications). A notation to describe this framework is elaborated, novel techniques and tools for the construction and application of customer requirements in systems development are developed and used in KRF to facilitate bridging these gaps. The resulting prototype KRF is developed and used against some example problems in retail organisations, and so shown to be sufficient in principle of handling all the negotiation problems at the initial requirements stage, singly and in combination. Also, it is shown how KRF sub-process can be combined and used to elicit information and knowledge mining between both the customer and the system developer using human communication and interaction capture as an example. Systems these days are living systems, changeable, in business and the human factor in developing them cannot be excluded. It is further shown how these techniques and tools can be augmented with established methodologies rather than inventing new ones and to enable management to react as quickly as possible to global changing market conditions. This proposed framework is also evaluated and tested against the original criteria of initial requirements, exactness and executability

Is a knowledge based value network an effective model for implementing e-government?

Is a knowledge based value network an effective model for implementing e-government? E-Government is a vision of how public sector organisations will govern, serve citizens, and interact with business partners, their employees, and other Government organisations. The “e” in e-Government represents a move to fully integrated, secure, on-demand accessible electronic Government that will: • improve integrated service delivery • provide universal citizen access • begin to enhance traditional Government structures and processes • support new Government products and services by relying on the emergence and convergence of new technologies • improve effectiveness Electronic commerce (e-commerce) has fundamentally changed the way business is being conducted and Government is rushing to catch up

Information systems failure : a business-led knowledge requirements framework for modelling business requirements

Our work will be mainly concerned with improving the crucial first stage (the requirements stage) of any system development methodology in order to improve requirements. A framework has been developed, called "knowledge requirements framework (KRF)" to help customers and system developers bridge the knowledge and understanding gaps at the initial requirements stage of the Information Technology System (ITS) development process. Unclear business requirements, mismatch of knowledge and understanding are among the major factors that contributes to some ITS failures worldwide. The aim is to capture functional requirements at the initial stage of the system development process and to integrate systems and people use them in the development process. Multi-surveys are conducted, capture and highlight the criteria of initial requirements exactness and executability. Knowledge and understanding gaps, which occur in the development process, are described. These gaps constitute the problem at the invisible architecture in the initial requirements stage, as they expose mismatch of both knowledge and understanding problems (Requirements/Specifications). A notation to describe this framework is elaborated, novel techniques and tools for the construction and application of customer requirements in systems development are developed and used in KRF to facilitate bridging these gaps. The resulting prototype KRF is developed and used against some example problems in retail organisations, and so shown to be sufficient in principle of handling all the negotiation problems at the initial requirements stage, singly and in combination. Also, it is shown how KRF sub-process can be combined and used to elicit information and knowledge mining between both the customer and the system developer using human communication and interaction capture as an example. Systems these days are living systems, changeable, in business and the human factor in developing them cannot be excluded. It is further shown how these techniques and tools can be augmented with established methodologies rather than inventing new ones and to enable management to react as quickly as possible to global changing market conditions. This proposed framework is also evaluated and tested against the original criteria of initial requirements, exactness and executability.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

EXPLOITING KASPAROV'S LAW: ENHANCED INFORMATION SYSTEMS INTEGRATION IN DOD SIMULATION-BASED TRAINING ENVIRONMENTS

Despite recent advances in the representation of logistics considerations in DOD staff training and wargaming simulations, logistics information systems (IS) remain underrepresented. Unlike many command and control (C2) systems, which can be integrated with simulations through common protocols (e.g., OTH-Gold), many logistics ISs require manpower-intensive human-in-the-loop (HitL) processes for simulation-IS (sim-IS) integration. Where automated sim-IS integration has been achieved, it often does not simulate important sociotechnical system (STS) dynamics, such as information latency and human error, presenting decision-makers with an unrealistic representation of logistics C2 capabilities in context. This research seeks to overcome the limitations of conventional sim-IS interoperability approaches by developing and validating a new approach for sim-IS information exchange through robotic process automation (RPA). RPA software supports the automation of IS information exchange through ISs’ existing graphical user interfaces. This “outside-in” approach to IS integration mitigates the need for engineering changes in ISs (or simulations) for automated information exchange. In addition to validating the potential for an RPA-based approach to sim-IS integration, this research presents recommendations for a Distributed Simulation Engineering and Execution Process (DSEEP) overlay to guide the engineering and execution of sim-IS environments.Major, United States Marine CorpsApproved for public release. Distribution is unlimited

BPR initiatives: The impacts of IT and organisational customs and practices

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University, 28/02/2002.This research is designed to investigate the relationship between IT and Organisational customs and practices in Business Process Reengineering (BPR) projects based on a research framework, which consists of organisational culture, IT and the outcome of BPR initiatives together with the inextricable interdependence between them. The focus is on developing a process oriented, context-based description and explanation of the BPR phenomenon in Arab Gulf Cooperation Council (AGCC) countries. The study strives to describe and explain the process of adopting and implementing BPR initiatives in petrochemical and utilities industries in AGCC countries in terms of interaction of contextual conditions, actions and consequences. The research methodology of this thesis focuses on the pragmatics of conducting case studies as a rigorous and effective method of research. The study emphasises on conducting positivist inquiry of three case studies' data to deductively test the researcher's understanding on BPR and her assumptions of 'Blueprints' for successful BPR in AGCC countries. Two of the case studies organisations are sister companies operating in the oil and gas industry, whereas the third case study organisation is a utility company operating in the field of water and electricity generation and supply. This study resulted in a framework that could serve as a prescription to achieve a successful BPR initiative. It has identified a number of organisational elements that emphasised the necessity to pay attention to cultural and IT issues prior to undertaking BPR projects. These include the development of strategy and sound stimuli for the project, the availability of leadership, top management vision, availability of required skills and expertise and the maturity of the IT infrastructure. In addition, the study has empirically emphasised a number of BPR project implementation elements that should be in place to ensure successful implementation and management of the project including: the availability of an appropriately composed project team, continuous communication, users' involvement and usage of communication technologies

Organizational Intelligence in Digital Innovation: Evidence from Georgia State University

The fourth industrial revolution challenges organizations to cope with dynamic business landscapes as they seek to improve their competitive position through rapid and pervasive digitalization of products, services, processes, and business models. As organizations sense and respond to new opportunities and threats, digital innovations are not only meeting new requirements, unarticulated needs, and market demands, they also lead to disruptive transformation of sociotechnical structures. Despite the practical relevance and theoretical significance of digital innovations, we still have limited knowledge on how digital innovation initiatives are rationalized, realized, and managed to improve organizational performance. Drawing on a longitudinal study of digital innovations to improve student success at Georgia State University, we develop a theory of organizational intelligence to help understand how organizations’ digital innovation initiatives are organized and managed to improve their performance over time in the broader context of organizational transformation. We posit that organizational intelligence enables an organization to gather, process, and manipulate information and to communicate, share, and make sense of the knowledge it creates, so it can increase its adaptive potential in the dynamic environment in which it operates. Moreover, we elaborate how organizational intelligence is constituted as human and material agency come together in analytical and relational intelligence to help organizations effectively manage digital innovations, and how organizational intelligence both shapes and is shaped by an organization’s digital innovation initiatives. Hence, while current research on organizational intelligence predominantly emphasizes analytic capabilities, this research puts equal emphasis on relational capabilities. Similarly, while current research on organizational intelligence focuses only on human agency, this research focuses equally on material agency. Our proposed theory of organizational intelligence responds to recent calls to position IS theories along the sociotechnical axis of cohesion and has pronounced implications for both theory and practice

Value Frame, Paradox and Change: The Constructive Nature of Information Technology Business Value

The role of IT in the creation of business value has been considered from various perspectives, such as strategic alignment, sustained advantage, and infrastructure capability. In this paper, we try to extend these previous perspectives by describing a flexible sensemaking framework for valuing complex technological resources. This framework assumes that the nature of IT business value is pluralistic, paradoxical, and dynamic. We describe four modes of valuation that comprise this framework: Routinizing, Cost-structuring, Positioning, and Learning, and illustrate them using historical lessons from airline reservation systems. Findings suggest that IT-derived business value can be characterized by competing tensions across diverse value frames that are paradoxically structured and change over time. We propose that such a pluralistic approach will extend the vocabulary of IT-derived business value and will improve managerial capability for sensemaking across multiple frames

A Sociotechnical Systems Analysis of Building Information Modelling (STSaBIM) Implementation in Construction Organisations

The concept of BIM is nascent but evolving rapidly, thus, its deployment has become the latest shibboleth amongst both academics and practitioners in the construction sector in the recent couple of years. Due to construction clients buy-in of the BIM concept, the entire industry is encouraged to pursue a vision of changing work practices in line with the BIM ideas. Also, existing research recognises that the implementation of BIM affects all areas of the construction process from design of the building, through the organisation of projects, to the way in which the construction process is executed and how the finished product is maintained. The problem however is that, existing research in technology utilisation in general, and BIM literature in particular, has offered limited help to practitioners trying to implement BIM, for focusing predominantly, on technology-centric views. Not surprisingly therefore, the current BIM literature emphasises on topics such as capability maturity models and anticipated outcomes of BIM rollouts. Rarely does the extant literature offer practitioners a cohesive approach to BIM implementation. Such technology-centric views inevitably represent a serious barrier to utilising the inscribed capabilities of BIM. This research therefore is predicated on the need to strengthen BIM implementation theory through monitoring and analysing its implementation in practice. Thus, the focus of this thesis is to carry out a sociotechnical systems (STS) analysis of BIM implementation in construction organisations. The concept of STS accommodates the dualism of the inscribed functions of BIM technologies and the contextual issues in the organisations and allows for the analysis of their interactive combination in producing the anticipated effect from BIM appropriation. An interpretive research methodology is adopted to study practitioners through a change process, involving the implementation of BIM in their work contexts. The study is based on constructivist ontological interpretations of participants. The study adopts an abductive research approach which ensures a back-and-forth movement between research sites and the theoretical phenomenon, effectively comparing the empirical findings with the existing theories and to eventually generate a new theoretical understanding and knowledge regarding the phenomenon under investigation. A two-stage process is also formulated for the empirical data collection - comprising: 1) initial exploratory study to help establish the framework for analysing BIM implementation in the construction context; and 2) case studies approach to provide a context for formulating novel understanding and validation of theory regarding BIM implementation in construction organisations. The analysis and interpretation of the empirical work follows the qualitative content analysis technique to observe and reflect on the results. The findings have shown that BIM implementation demands a complete breakaway from the status quo. Contrary to the prevailing understanding of a top-down approach to BIM utilisation, the study revealed that different organisations with plethora of visions, expectations and skills combine with artefacts to form or transform BIM practices. The rollout and appropriation of BIM occurs when organisations shape sociotechnical systems of institutions, processes and technologies to support certain practices over others. The study also showed that BIM implementation endures in a causal chain of influences as different project organisations with their localised BIM ambitions and expectations combine to develop holistic BIM-enabled project visions. Thus, distributed responsibilities on holistic BIM protocols among the different levels of influences are instituted and enforced under binding contractual obligations. The study has illuminated the centrality of both the technical challenges and sociological factors in shaping BIM deployment in construction. It is also one of the few studies that have produced accounts of BIM deployment that is strongly mediated by the institutional contexts of construction organisations. However, it is acknowledged that the focus of the research on qualitative interpretive enquiry does not have the hard and fast view of generalising from specific cases to broader population/contexts. Thus, it is suggested that further quantitative studies, using much larger data sample of BIM-enabled construction organisations could provide an interesting point of comparison to the conclusions derived from the research findings