The usage of student administrative management systems: a case study of Australian and Thai University

Despite the growing adoption and popularity of Student Administrative Management Systems (SAMS) in universities worldwide; however there has been little examination of how SAMS are used in universities. Thus, the aim of this research is to make a contribution to organisations such as universities and higher educational institutions through increasing their understanding of the outcomes of using SAMS. This research studies the usage of SAMS in the Australian and Thai universities. Accordingly, two representative universities in Australia and Thailand respectively are chosen on the basis that both institutions have implemented SAMS. The study adopts a qualitative approach in order to explore the rich data provided by participants. Focus groups, interviews and field observations have been the principal data collection methods. Specifically, Grounded Theory has been employed to analyse the data by identifying the phenomena and the consequences resulting from the case studies, with the literature survey providing an initial conceptual framework for this research. In this research, the analysis of data revealed the factors that influence on system usage across specified groups of users. The study also discovered that systems are affected by the organisations in which they are located and system constraints. The major conceptualisation from this research is the notion of poor system quality which implies that SAMS is misaligned. Another point to consider is that system usage is significant to the task as well as the users, because systems are mandated for specific and important tasks. In the universities, the users created and implemented a variety of workarounds to manage and execute their tasks. As a result, the implications of the workarounds were identified, reflecting the context of the university setting. In this research, the substantive theory was developed to help organisations better understand the usage of SAMS in the university environment. Understanding the SAMS usage in higher education environments provides an important step for contributing and supporting future studies of system usage