Identity ambiguity and the promises and practices of hybrid e-HRM project teams

The role of IS project team identity work in the enactment of day-to-day relationships with their internal clients is under-researched. We address this gap by examining the identity work undertaken by an electronic human resource management (e-HRM) 'hybrid' project team engaged in an enterprise-wide IS implementation for their multi-national organisation. Utilising social identity theory, we identify three distinctive, interrelated dimensions of project team identity work (project team management, team 'value propositions' (promises) and the team's 'knowledge practice'). We reveal how dissonance between two perspectives of e-HRM project identity work (clients' expected norms of project team's service and project team's expected norms of themselves) results in identity ambiguity. Our research contributions are to identity studies in the IS project management, HR and hybrid literatures and to managerial practice by challenging the assumption that hybrid experts are the panacea for problems associated with IS projects

Enterprise Systems Implementation and their Impact on Employee Job Outcomes. A review of the literature, synthesis, and framework

Enterprise Systems (ESs) integrate business processes to enhance organizational effectiveness. Organizations make huge investments in procuring and implementing ESs to effectively manage their resources to achieve strategic decision-making and improve operational excellence. Irrespective of the investments, it has become increasingly difficult to reap the full benefits of the systems being implemented. ESs implementation is a massive change event in organizations and in employees’ work routines that affect their day-to-day business activities impacting their job outcomes. To this end, the primary aim of this systematic literature review (SLR) is to synthesize the prior literature that explored the association between ESs implementation and employee job outcomes. Accordingly, our review study systematically analysed fifty empirical studies to identify themes that received substantial attention in the prior literature. The SLR uncovered key gaps, unearthed six themes, identified potential research areas, and proposed a comprehensive framework depicting the current research profile and potential avenues linking ESs and employee job outcomes. Our review provides significant implications for practice and research through the proposed comprehensive framework. We further suggest that ESs implementors need to consider job outcomes as crucial parameters during and post-implementation as successful implementation provides a strategic advantage to organizations and benefits employees

GOVERNANCE STRATEGIES FOR ENTERPRISE APPLICATION SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATIONS

Enterprise application system implementations are highly complex implementations that automate several business functions, such as financials, accounting, supply chain, customer services management, human resources management and reporting among others. This study aims at providing an alternative view of organization's enterprise application system (EAS) acceptance. Despite the large body of literature, there are still empirical inquiries to investigate the EAS system implementation from adopters' perspectives and how to identify risks in a multi-stakeholder and dynamic environment. The thesis consists of three essays on various aspects of relationship between enterprise application implementation in a multi-stakeholder environment and project governance. Valid measurement scales for predicting organization's acceptance of enterprise systems are in short supply. The first essay develops and validates new scales for two specific variables, integration and inter-dependency risks. These variables are hypothesized as key determinant for organizational success of enterprise application implementations by mitigating risks involved in a multi-stakeholder environment. A model of organization acceptance of enterprise systems was developed using these two scales and then tested for reliability from a total of 365 users and nine application groups. The measures were validated using ten different direct measures with reliabilities between 0.72 and 0.96. Integration risk was significantly related with perceived ease of use, consultant's product knowledge and training provided to the end users. Inter-dependency risk was significantly correlated with perceived usefulness, consultant's industry and product knowledge. Both integration and inter-dependency risks are significantly related with success of the new enterprise application. This study would benefit project executives by offering valuable managerial insights that enable them to appreciate and improve integration and inter-dependency of stakeholders. Implications for theory and practice are discussed for two sub-groups: that less experienced resources treat risks differently than more experienced resources, and business applications compared to technical enterprise applications. Academic community has not addressed governance of enterprise application projects that involve dynamic environments and how to mitigate integration and inter-dependency risks. In the second essay it is argued that acceptance of the system from end users is not enough? Adopters of new enterprise wide information technology solutions get most benefit when the solution continues to be adaptable when business, environment or other organizational priorities change - therefore making an implementation sustainable. The second essay discussed characteristics of sustainability of enterprise application implementation from organizational perspective. A case study was used to validate the characteristics of sustainability. The thesis sought to demonstrate the causal relationship between the organization's preparedness for sustainability and the emergence of implementation problems. The study extracted insight into the criticality of certain factors and the type of problems making decisions under weak governance situation. The third essay develops determinants for project governance success of enterprise application implementations by mitigating risks in a multi-stakeholder environment. This essay develops and validates new scales for five specific variables. Definitions of five variables were used to develop a model that was presented for content validity and then tested for reliability from a total of 117 project executives globally. The measures were validated with reliabilities between 0.73 and 0.94. Relationships between five measures were broken down to meaningful components and a three tier project governance structure was proposed to mitigate integration and inter-dependency risks in a multi-stakeholder environment

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP): a review of the literature

This article is a review of work published in various journals on the topics of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) between January 2000 and May 2006. A total of 313 articles from 79 journals are reviewed. The article intends to serve three goals. First, it will be useful to researchers who are interested in understanding what kinds of questions have been addressed in the area of ERP. Second, the article will be a useful resource for searching for research topics. Third, it will serve as a comprehensive bibliography of the articles published during the period. The literature is analysed under six major themes and nine sub-themes

An Updated ERP Systems Annotated Bibliography: 2001-2005

The goal of this study is to provide an updated annotated bibliography of ERP publications published in the main IS conferences and journals during the period 2001-2005, categorizing them through an ERP lifecycle based framework that is structured in phases. The first version of this bibliography was published in 2001 (Esteves and Pastor, 2001c). However, so far, we have extended the bibliography with a significant number of new publications in all the categories used in this paper. We also reviewed the categories and some incongruities were eliminated. Furthermore, we present topics for further research in each phase

Effets de contagion de conflits de projets TI antérieurs:Une recherche-action lors des phases préliminaires d'un projet d’implémentation

This article received the Best paper awardInternational audienceUser conflicts and resistance behaviours are important issues during Information System (IS) implementation. However, despite a large body of user resistance, conflicts, user acceptance or task-technology alignment literature focusing on on-going Information Technology (IT) projects, there is little literature addressing the impact of resistance behaviours that occurred in the past during previous IT projects, on the IT to-be-implemented. IS managers need to anticipate potential causes for project failure because of actual resistance behaviours, but also because of previous conflict behaviours. This paper discusses a 2-year action research project conducted at Efficient Innovation (a European leader in innovation management consulting) during preliminary phases of its R&D portfolio management Decision Support System (DST) implementation project. Through the lens of resistance behaviours, our findings reveal the following: (1) The tool was used by DST-advocate groups as a legitimation and homogenisation tool (boundary object) to cover consultants having different skills, or lack of skills: a socio-political oriented conflict appeared to hide a task-oriented conflict. Beyond the task-oriented conflict, a socio-political oriented conflict appeared to hide a struggle for power and appreciation; and (2) Different conflict behaviours came to light, associated with the firm's Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. The observation was that conflict behaviours expressed towards an existing IT (ERP) can be contagious and cascaded to another IT to-be-implemented (DST). The underlying message of this paper for researchers and practitioners is to consider the latter previous resistance behaviours and potential conflict contagion effects as a key process embedded into IT design.Les conflits des utilisateurs ainsi que les comportements de résistance sont des questions importantes au cours de l’implémentation des Systèmes d'Information (SI). Toutefois, en dépit d'une littérature très riche en SI traitant de la résistance des utilisateurs, les conflits, l'acceptation de la technologie, ou bien l’alignement tâche-technologie, il y a peu de littérature concernant les comportements de résistance qui ont eu lieu dans le passé, lors des projets TI antérieurs, et qui pourraient avoir un impact sur les projets TI en cours. Les managers ont besoin d’anticiper les causes potentielles de l’échec des projets en raison des comportements actuels de résistance mais aussi l'échec issu de comportements de résistances antérieures. Cet article traite un projet de recherche-action de 2 ans mené au sein d’Efficient Innovation (un leader européen dans le conseil en gestion de l'innovation) lors de phases préliminaires du projet d’implémentation d’un système d’aide à la décision (DST) pour la gestion de portefeuilles des projets R&D. Au travers du cadre théorique de comportements de résistance, nos résultats révèlent ce qui suit : (1) L'outil a été utilisé par les groupes pro-DST comme un outil de légitimation et d'homogénéisation (objet-frontière) pour couvrir les consultants ayant des compétences différentes, ou bien manquant de compétences. Un conflit axé socio-politique cachait un conflit axé tâche. Au-delà du conflit axé tâche, un conflit axé socio-politique cachait une lutte pour le pouvoir et l'appréciation ; et (2) d’autres conflits apparaissaient, associés au système Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) de l'entreprise. L'observation était que les conflits exprimés envers une TI existante (ERP) pourraient être contagieux et impacter une autre TI en cours d’implémentation (DST). Le message sous-jacent de ce document pour les chercheurs et les praticiens est de prendre en considération les comportements de résistance antérieurs et les effets potentiels de contagion des conflits comme un facteur clé intégré dans la conception de la TI

An Analysis of the Processes that Ensure Success in ERP Implementations - A Case Study in a Public Sector Organisation

Companies adopt and implement Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems to streamline their business processes, enhance functionality and reporting and ultimately to increase efficiency. ERP implementations are highly complex projects. This paper analyses those factors that need to be considered and understood for a successful implementation. ERP implementation chances of success can be increased by ensuring the ERP project receives a high level of executive and project sponsor support. Top and middle management commitment and leadership and good, clear communication should also be paid particular attention to by any organisation gearing up to undertake such an initiative

Evaluating stakeholders performance of ERP systems in Saudi Arabia higher education

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are complex and comprehensive software packages designed to integrate business processes and functions. Despite the difficulties and risks of implementing such a system, the last decade has seen a remarkable global diffusion of such systems. To cope with technical developments, the Saudi Arabian government is starting to implement them in both private and public organisations, including the higher education (HE). HE in Saudi Arabia applies integrated solutions to replace existing systems, supporting all its business functions and improving effectiveness and efficiency. Evaluating the impact of ERP adoption on stakeholders’ performance is complex and no single existing model was considered adequate. To overcome their various weaknesses, this study integrates three models (Task Technology Fit, the Information Systems Success Model and End User Computing Satisfaction) to produce a new model which offers a comprehensive view of the most important factors affecting stakeholders’ performance. This integration results in a theoretical framework that is used as model for empirical investigations of the impact of ERP systems on HE stakeholders. The aim of this research is to assess the impact of ERP systems on Saudi academic institutions, focusing on stakeholders’ post-implementation performance. Three case studies are examined, using mixed methods of interviews and questionnaires to collect quantitative and qualitative data. SPSS 20 and analytical techniques were undertaken to analyse case studies data. While the results varied according to the circumstances of each case, the overall quantitative findings were that there were six significant factors in the system quality dimension (timeliness, flexibility, ease of use, content, currency and authorisation) and two (reliability and responsiveness) in the service quality dimension. These results were consistent with those of the qualitative phase, which identified a number of other factors having a significant impact on stakeholder performance: resistance to change, continuous training and education, appropriate systems customisation and top management support. In general, it was found that ERP systems had a significant of positive and negative nature impact on HE stakeholders’ performance and productivity in Saudi Arabia

Attitudes to information technology in health care professions

The purpose of this paper is to explore attitudes towards IT among various categories of health care staff; health care professions. We will identify problem areas that may be the reasons for why different attitudes among different professions at a healthcare organisation exist, and subsequently we will analyse how this may have impact on how to make sense of IT use. The research question is: What factors may explain differences regarding attitudes to IT among different professions in a health care organisation? The paper reports from a particular study of the “NU” healthcare organisation in west Sweden. The results reveal two main problem areas: i) the infrastructural and; ii) the socio-organisational. These are discussed as analytical implications for bridging the gaps between different professions in health care organisations