ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks: a literature review

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation is a complex and vibrant process, one that involves a combination of technological and organizational interactions. Often an ERP implementation project is the single largest IT project that an organization has ever launched and requires a mutual fit of system and organization. Also the concept of an ERP implementation supporting business processes across many different departments is not a generic, rigid and uniform concept and depends on variety of factors. As a result, the issues addressing the ERP implementation process have been one of the major concerns in industry. Therefore ERP implementation receives attention from practitioners and scholars and both, business as well as academic literature is abundant and not always very conclusive or coherent. However, research on ERP systems so far has been mainly focused on diffusion, use and impact issues. Less attention has been given to the methods used during the configuration and the implementation of ERP systems, even though they are commonly used in practice, they still remain largely unexplored and undocumented in Information Systems research. So, the academic relevance of this research is the contribution to the existing body of scientific knowledge. An annotated brief literature review is done in order to evaluate the current state of the existing academic literature. The purpose is to present a systematic overview of relevant ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks as a desire for achieving a better taxonomy of ERP implementation methodologies. This paper is useful to researchers who are interested in ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Results will serve as an input for a classification of the existing ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Also, this paper aims also at the professional ERP community involved in the process of ERP implementation by promoting a better understanding of ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks, its variety and history

NURSING STUDIES: PROMOTERS AND BARRIERS FOR ADHERENCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE GUIDELINES AMONG NURSES

Clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) are designed to improve the care and safety of patients in hospitals. This thesis explores the promoters and barriers for CPG adherence among nurses. The research is based on a combination of a systematic literature review, qualitative research and a quantitative study. The systematic literature review included searching three data bases, namely, the British Nursing Index (BNI), Medline and Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL). The qualitative research study included one-to-one interviews and focus groups. The quantitative study consisted of a questionnaire distributed to nurses to extend and check the findings of the qualitative studies. The systematic literature review revealed that the attitude of doctors to any CPG is influenced most by the level of their agreement with the guideline and by its applicability in practice. The adherence of nurses to CPGs is influenced most by the support and feedback they receive and by team interactions. A previous framework for CPG adherence by doctors has been produced by Cabana (1999) based on a literature review. This thesis extends that framework to nurses, and adapts it on the basis of my original research findings. Three principal themes emerged from the qualitative studies; namely, nurses’ attitudes to CPGs, their knowledge of CPG and external factors that influence CPG adherence. Within these, the most prominent promoters of CPG adherence were nurses’ sense of their accountability, professional values and self-efficacy, as well as managerial monitoring and belief that a CPG would achieve the expected desirable outcome. The last of these depended to a large extent on nurses’ trust in the credibility of the guideline authors. The main barriers to CPG adherence were lack of knowledge about the guidelines caused by insufficient time to read them, poor presentation and inadequate dissemination of CPGs and the low priority given to training within a nurse’s schedule. Other barriers included lack of staff resources to apply CPGs, the exigencies of individual patient problems and wishes, the frequent movement of nurses between specialisms and a general failure to involve nurses in drafting the guidelines. All these results were confirmed by the results of a questionnaire survey. The revised framework presented here could help health care organisations, medical educators, policy makers and managers to develop better models for CPG development and awareness, especially among nurses, and to have a greater insight into the factors that promote or inhibit CPG adherence. Based on the framework, recommendations are made to help these groups of people, and nurses themselves, improve nurses’ adherence to CPGs. These are presented below, and are found as Table 7.1 in the thesis

Knowing your body and being compassionate with yourself

This portfolio thesis consists of four parts, a systematic literature review; a mixed methods empirical paper; a qualitative empirical paper; and supporting appendices.Part One is a systematic review of the literature regarding how body awareness can affect well‐being. This review stems from ideas of embodiment and reciprocal influences and connections between mind and body.The concept of embodiment also informed the development of an empirical investigation into the impact of compassionate imagery on affect and self‐compassion in a non‐clinical sample. This empirical study is divided into two papers, presented in Parts Two and Three. Part Two uses mixed methods to quantify the extent to which psychoeducation and meditative exercises can alter affect and self‐compassion. Additionally, participants’ interview responses to this experience are presented to add depth to the understanding of the clinical relevance of this practice.Part Three offers a qualitative study to explore reactions to the concept of self-compassion in a non‐clinical sample. Participants emphasised the role of culture and systemic influences on their perceptions of their capacity to be self‐compassionate and the paper presents a brief exploration into possible reasons for this and methods by which these barriers could be overcome in order to promote well‐being.Part Four comprises of appendices, including reflective and epistemological statements

Organizational Learning from Extreme Performance Experience: The Impact of Success and Recovery Experience

This paper argues that two different types of a firm’s own extreme performance experiences—success and recovery—and their interactions can generate survival-enhancing learning. Although these types of experience often represent valuable sources of useful learning, several important learning challenges arise when a firm has extremely limited prior experience of the same type. Thus, we theorize that a certain threshold of a given type of experience is required before each type of experience becomes valuable, with low levels of experience harming the organization. Furthermore, we propose that success and recovery experience will interact to enhance each other’s value. These conditions can help overcome learning challenges such as superstitious learning or learning from small samples. We investigate our ideas using a sample of the U.S. commercial banks founded between 1984 and 1998. Our results indicate that both success and recovery experience of a firm generate survival-enhancing learning, but only after a certain level of experience is reached. Furthermore, success and recovery experience enhance each other’s learning value, consistent with the theories that emphasize the importance of richer and contrasting experience in providing useful knowledge. Our framework advances organizational learning theory by presenting a contingent model of the impact of success and recovery experience and their interaction

Mergers and acquisitions transactions strategies in diffusion - type financial systems in highly volatile global capital markets with nonlinearities

The M and A transactions represent a wide range of unique business optimization opportunities in the corporate transformation deals, which are usually characterized by the high level of total risk. The M and A transactions can be successfully implemented by taking to an account the size of investments, purchase price, direction of transaction, type of transaction, and using the modern comparable transactions analysis and the business valuation techniques in the diffusion type financial systems in the finances. We developed the MicroMA software program with the embedded optimized near-real-time artificial intelligence algorithm to create the winning virtuous M and A strategies, using the financial performance characteristics of the involved firms, and to estimate the probability of the M and A transaction completion success. We believe that the fluctuating dependence of M and A transactions number over the certain time period is quasi periodic. We think that there are many factors, which can generate the quasi periodic oscillations of the M and A transactions number in the time domain, for example: the stock market bubble effects. We performed the research of the nonlinearities in the M and A transactions number quasi-periodic oscillations in Matlab, including the ideal, linear, quadratic, and exponential dependences. We discovered that the average of a sum of random numbers in the M and A transactions time series represents a time series with the quasi periodic systematic oscillations, which can be finely approximated by the polynomial numbers. We think that, in the course of the M and A transaction implementation, the ability by the companies to absorb the newly acquired knowledge and to create the new innovative knowledge bases, is a key predeterminant of the M and A deal completion success as in Switzerland.Comment: 160 pages, 9 figures, 37 table

Challenges of Change:Technological Ease or Technological Upset?

The Electronic Health Record (EHR) has created new challenges for service providers and healthcare organizations. They need to remain competitive, improve the quality of care, and reduce costs while providing quality patient care. The development and implementation of new knowledge from individual current competencies will be an ongoing focus for healthcare organizations and healthcare providers who use the EHR technology. Twenty-eight physicians were interviewed for this report in order to understand their perceptions EHR technology in knowledge change or technology inspired unlearning, during service delivery. A model is proposed to better understand the changes needed in patient care delivery systems as specific actions, behaviors, and mental models require continual updating. Through this analysis, we developed the model, Service Delivery Unlearning Paradigm, to suggest how change influences collaboration, technological ease, and technological upset. Recommendations for future research and actions for practitioners are suggested

Responsible innovation in emerging markets' SMEs: The role of alliance learning and absorptive capacity

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Challenges of change: Technology ease or technology upset?

New knowledge learning that involves errorless task performance has become a key objective for healthcare organizations [Rushmer & Davies, 2004]. As knowledge changes to incorporate the use of computer systems, service delivery using the Electronic Health Record (EHR) has created unforeseen challenges for service providers and the organizations they serve. This challenge appears mainly to involve a change in actions, behaviors and mental models by providers using the EHR [Senge, 2006]. This is necessary for healthcare organizations if they want to remain competitive, improve the quality of care, and reduce costs. The challenge is to develop and implement this new knowledge from individual current competencies [Becker, 2004]. One group that is critical in meeting these challenges is the physicians. Work practice documentation has changed to include a technological focus. As physicians interact with EHR technology, it is important they have the ability to unlearn needed knowledge while maintaining intellectual capital for organizations [McDonald, 1997]