Resist, comply or workaround? An examination of different facets of user engagement with information systems

This paper provides a summary of studies of user resistance to Information Technology (IT) and identifies workaround activity as an understudied and distinct, but related, phenomenon. Previous categorizations of resistance have largely failed to address the relationships between the motivations for divergences from procedure and the associated workaround activity. This paper develops a composite model of resistance/workaround derived from two case study sites. We find four key antecedent conditions derived from both positive and negative resistance rationales and identify associations and links to various resultant workaround behaviours and provide supporting Chains of Evidence from two case studies

PHYSICIANS\u27 RESISTANCE TOWARDS INFORMATION SYSTEMS IN HEALTHCARE: THE CASE OF WORKAROUNDS

With the cost of healthcare delivery rising all over the world the way hospitals use their resources stands in the centre of attention in many countries. In order to make best use of doctors and nurses and costly medical appliances etc. the use of information systems plays a vital role. Although all physicians are usually obliged to use the systems anecdotal evidence shows that use-patterns are not always as expected. Some physicians do not like the system and find ways to avoid working with it. They establish so called workarounds . This research investigates into the root causes of workarounds used by hospital physicians. Based on information systems theories a framework is developed to structure the findings from eight interviews in three hospitals in Germany. The interview partners were assured complete anonymity and thus the interviews were very open. We identified six distinctive types of workarounds and discuss their causes. The setup of this research is of exploratory nature using a grounded theory approach. Our findings underline the existence of workarounds in medical environment and provide guidance how to cope with them

Workaround Aware Business Process Modeling

Workarounds are an omnipresent part of organizational settings where formal rules and regulations describe standardized processes. Still, only few studies have focused on incorporating workarounds in designing information systems (IS) or as a part of management decisions. Therefore, this study provides an extension to the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) by conducting a metamodel transformation, which includes workarounds. As a result, the Workaround Process Modeling Notation (WPMN) (1) leads organizations in designing workaround aware systems, (2) supports managers in deciding how to deal with workarounds, and (3) provides auditors with visualizations of non-compliance. We exemplify how this technique can be used to model a workaround in the process of accessing patient-identifying data in a hospital. We evaluated the model and find it particular suitable as an empirically grounded BPMN extension

Disregarding History: Contemporary IS Contexts and Participatory Design

User participation has long been seen as a core topic of study within the IS field, yet its relevance to contemporary development environments and contexts has recently been brought into question. The aim of this article is to investigate the extent to which this rich history and experience is used to inform contemporary practices. We provide a survey that evaluates the degree to which PD (participatory design) is currently represented in the IS literature, the results of which reveal a low representation. Based on these findings, a number of propositions are offered

SYSTEMS OF TRANSFIGURATION AND THE ADOPTION OF IT UNDER SURVEILLANCE

Research on the adoption of information technology (IT) has shown that employees either comply with the implementation of a new information system or resist its implementation, improvising information systems artifacts to replace it. We use a 15-month ethnography of the implementation of Siebel in a desk sales unit to outline a third specification of adoption where employees scaffold their work in an improvised information system that they hide from their managers by using their company’s information systems to create an electronic façade of compliance. This façade is a labor-intensive process, complex enough to require a third information system of its own. We call this system “transfiguration system” and expose and explain a hitherto unexplored link between the information systems improvised by employees and the information systems that their company implements. We refer to the work required to create and maintain this link as transfiguration work

GENERATIVE RESISTANCE: BROADENING THE BOUNDARIES OF RESEARCH ON RESISTANCE IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS CHANGE

This paper proposes a new research perspective on resistance to information systems (IS) change. Drawing upon a power lens and complementing it with the organizational literature on resistance, we develop an integrative framework that conceptualizes resistance at three levels: 1) the non-compliance behaviors, 2) the meanings and norms that resisters contest and enact, and 3) the technical artifacts that resisters bring into their acts. By mapping existing IS literature on resistance onto our framework, we identify a bias of the literature towards a refusal view of resistance. That is, IS literature has been mainly concerned with resistance as a refusal behavior i.e. refusal to a new system, to changes in the working practices, to loss of status quo by which resisters attempt to neutralize the actions from the proponents of IS change. Yet our framework enables us to depict resistance not only as refusal but also as generative. Whilst a focus on resistance as refusal pays attention to the acts by which resisters aim to block the outcomes intended by the proponents of IS change, the analysis of the generative potential of resistance considers two additional aspects. First, it involves looking at how resisters challenge the meanings that proponents assign to the IS change i.e. assumptions about the technology, goals and role of actors in the change process. Second, it entails analyzing how (human) resisters and technical artifacts become intertwined in the acts of resistance and how those socio-technical assemblages instigate disciplinary effects to the proponents of IS change. In other words, studying the generative potential of resistance involves viewing resistance as a socio-material accomplishment that may transform the established order through structural and radical changes

A SITUATIONAL PERSPECTIVE ON WORKAROUNDS IN IT-ENABLED BUSINESS PROCESSES: A MULTIPLE CASE STUDY

Workarounds are still one of the most puzzling phenomena in business process management research and practice. From a compliance perspective, workarounds are studied as control failure and the cause for inferior process quality. From a process reengineering perspective, however, workarounds are studied as an important source of process improvement. In this paper, we advance recent theory on the emergence of workarounds to resolve this puzzle by analyzing empirical evidence from a multiple case study. Our analysis reveals that employees utilize workarounds based on a risk-benefit analysis of the situational context. If the realized benefits (efficiency gains) outweigh the situational risks (exposure of process violations), workarounds will be perceived as process improvement. Erroneous risk-benefit analysis, however, leads to exposure of the same workaround as control failure. Quite unexpectedly, we found that information systems serve as critical cus for the situational balance of benefits and risks. Our result suggests that process-instance-level workarounds are treated as options that are engaged if the situation permits, in contrast to process-level workarounds that manifest as unofficial routines. We also contribute the notion of situational risk-benefits analysis to the theory on workarounds