The legitimation-seeking process in information systems development

We investigate the importance of legitimation-seeking in IS development by describing two related projects in the Central Hospital, Bangkok. In the second project, begun immediately after the first, there were major improvements in legitimation-seeking activities and the implemented IS was a success, providing strong evidence that stakeholders perceived a direct link between legitimation failure and project failure. Our results provide insights into legitimation-seeking failure and the multiple legitimation strategies used to achieve pragmatic, moral and cognitive types of legitimacy. We generalize our results to an integrated framework of the legitimation process as well as a preliminary model of IS legitimation-seeking failure involving the mum and deaf effects. We suggest that this framework may be generalized to settings which share similar empirical circumstances

EXPLORING THE LEGITIMATION SEEKING ACTIVITIES IN AN INFORMATION SYSTEM PROJECT

Introducing new Information Systems (IS) to organizations often brings changes to the status quo and IS managers need to gain acceptance and support from stakeholders. Legitimation is an abstraction of formal and informal approval of stakeholders toward organizational activities. Our research motivation is to demonstrate that a process-based understanding of legitimation-seeking activities is important for understanding how IS are legitimated in organizations, and to suggest that the area of legitimation presents a potentially valuable framework for IS research by drawing together previous studies concerning problems such as acceptance and resistance, user involvement and participation. We investigate the legitimation seeking process in an IS project at a large Chinese organization, employing a qualitative approach and a case study method. Findings from our case study show that achieving legitimation is important in successfully developing and implementing IS. This paper suggests that activities for gaining, maintaining and repairing legitimation should be considered and carried out in an integrated way, and a new Integrated Legitimation Activity Model (ILAM) is proposed. The paper also discusses the two different legitimation seeking approaches (conformity and manipulation) adopted by the project team, and analyses factors that influenced the project team’s choice of these approaches. Limitations and directions for further research are discussed

LEGITIMATING USER PARTICIPATION IN MATURE ORGANISATIONS- EXPLORING SOCIAL MEDIA ADOPTION IN A FINANCIAL SERVICES ORGANIZATION

In this paper, we explore strategies that institutional entrepreneurs use to legitimate entreprise social media in a context where ESM interest vary across and within organisational units. Using an in-depth case study of a financial firm we contribute to IS-legitimation research in several ways. First, we outline an institutional logics template that future IS-legitimation research can use to conceptualise organisational and technological values, in order to effectively assess legitimacy gaps. Second, we address calls by Flynn and Du(2011) for studies of IS legitimation in pluralistic contexts by proposing that when ESM interest vary across and within organisational units legitimation seekers may successfully gain and sustain participation by applying pragmatic selection, conformation and advertising legitimation strategies, .Finally, we advance a professional ESM design that can be used to gain participation for ESM before network effects are generated