A New Agenda for User Participation: Reconsidering the Old Scandinavian Prescription

A considerable degree of user participation is found in current system development and implementation projects i Scandinavia. Obviously, there is a strong belief in the necessity of user participation. Still, practitioners and researchers face severe problems in defining the right way of involvement. Still, there is a lack of convincing empirical evidence concerning the rela tionship between user participation and systems success. In this article we argue that participation is of little use if the agenda excludes organizational issues. If only technical options are discussed, fundamental problems in the organization may remain unsolved. Partly based on empirical findings from a comparative Danish study, this article analyzes how participation may change with the changing relations between user, user organization and IS-professionals. We find that the useful ness of participation is highly dependent on user type and organizational function. Different projects require different agendas and participants. In some cases indirect users are the most important when it comes to fundamen tal improvements, and they are often excluded from participation. We propose a framework that explicitly focuses on the process from problem to issue on the agenda and we conclude that it is time to change the agenda for user participation. To help in clarifying the emerging roles of users and IS-professionals, the research agenda may be changed as well

Models of Organizational Change and the Adoption of Web Technologies: Encapsulating Participation

A considerable gap is apparent between the rather sophisticated theories of change that analyze how and why change occurs and the practice-oriented focus of the implementation and guidance of actual change processes. This paper attempts partially to close this gap by illustrating how recent developments in change theory may be useful in understanding the actual adoption and implementation of emergent Internet technologies. Empirically, the paper draws on two surveys of Internet-technology adoption by Nordic banks and manufacturers. The point of departure is Van de Ven and Poole’s (1995) identification of four basic types of theories regarding change processes: life cycle, teleological, dialectical, and evolutionary theories. These theories all encapsulate planned change processes in that they can explain actual processes and outcomes. Combined with specific research they may also help to explain why key persons ’ participation in the Internet banking projects is only weakly associated with greater agreement, more congruent frames, and better outcomes. Furthermore, they can enrich the perceptions of participants in actual projects. On this basis we argue for more comprehensive diagnostic models of organizational development and for research strategies that explicitly incorporate practitioner views

The consequences and limits of empowerment in financial services

Empowerment may be one of the answers to the growing competition and increasingly demanding customers in the financial retail sector, but the relation between empowerment and profit-oriented behaviour at the service encounter has been only sparsely documented. This article offers a comparative empirical analysis of the conditions and impact of empowerment and related activities in Danish financial institutions, with a focus on semi-standardised front-line jobs. The results indicate that granting decision-making authority and autonomy to the individual front-line employees has often been a powerful step in the efforts of the financial service companies to increase their competitiveness. In the change process, formal participation has only a moderate supportive impact on performance while changes initiated at the branch offices and the linking of rewards with performance, both have a notably positive impact on the competitiveness and profit-oriented behaviour of front-line employees.Empowerment Financial services Implementation Profit orientation Service quality