ERP customization failure: Institutionalized accounting practices, power relations and market forces

Purpose: This paper examines a detailed case study of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) customization failure in an Egyptian state-owned company (AML) by drawing on new institutional sociology and its extensions. It explains how ERP customization failure is shaped by the interplay between institutionalised accounting practices, conflicting institutions, power relations and market forces. Methodology/Approach: The research methodology is based on using an intensive case study informed by new institutional sociology, especially the interplay between conflicting institutions, power relations and market forces. Data were collected from multiple sources, including interviews, observations, discussions and documentary analysis. Findings: The findings revealed that the inability of the ERP system to meet the core accounting requirements of the control authorities (the Central Agency for Accountability) was the explicit reason cited for the ERP failure. The externally imposed requirements of the Uniform Accounting System and planning budgets were used to resist both other institutional pressures (from the Holding Company for Engineering Industries) and market and competitive pressures. Research limitations: There are some limitations associated with the use of the case study method, including the inability to generalize from the findings of a single case study, some selectivity in the individuals interviewed, and the subjective interpretation by the researchers of the empirical data. Practical implications: The paper identifies that the interplay between institutional pressures, institutionalised accounting practices, intra-organizational power relations, and market forces contributed to the failure to embed ERP in a major company. Understanding such relationships can help other organisations to become more aware of the factors affecting successful implementation of new ERP systems and provide a better basis for planning the introduction of new technologies. Originality/value of paper: This paper draws on recent research and thinking in sociology, especially the development and application of new institutional sociology. In addition, the paper is concerned with ERP implementation and use and management accounting in a transitional economy, Egypt, and hence contributes to debate about exporting Western accounting practices and other technologies to countries with different cultures and different stages of economic and political development. Classification: Research paper/ case stud

Imitation of complex social responses under conditions of prior positive social interaction and withdrawal of positive social interaction.

A major drawback in extending social learning principles to non laboratory situations has been the highly personalized and qualified nature of social reinforcement. Much research has produced few uniform conclusions about the kinds of demographic, personality, and situational variables which tend to facilitate the effectiveness of social reinforcement. Little is known about why one person is an effective reinforcing agent while another person with similar characteristics is an ineffective reinforcing agent. Moreover, the choice of tasks employed by previous studies indicates that the working philosophy has been that the complexities of social reinforcer effectiveness can be unravelled only in highly structured, cognitive, taskoriented situations

Targets of Suspicion: The Impact of Post-9/11 Policies on Muslims, Arabs and South Asians in the US

In response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the U.S. government began a campaign of aggressive immigration enforcement targeted at Muslims, Arabs and South Asians. Rather than first seeking to identify suspected terrorists, the government initiated harsh law enforcement actions against whole communities with the hope that some of those caught might be terrorist suspects

Behavioral Recovery and Early Decision Making in Patients with Prolonged Disturbance in Consciousness after Traumatic Brain Injury

The extent of behavioral recovery that occurs in patients with traumatic disorders of consciousness (DoC) following discharge from the acute care setting has been under-studied and increases the risk of overly pessimistic outcome prediction. The aim of this observational cohort study was to systematically track behavioral and functional recovery in patients with prolonged traumatic DoC following discharge from the acute care setting. Standardized behavioral data were acquired from 95 patients in a minimally conscious (MCS) or vegetative state (VS) recruited from 11 clinic sites and randomly assigned to the placebo arm of a previously completed prospective clinical trial. Patients were followed for 6 weeks by blinded observers to determine frequency of recovery of six target behaviors associated with functional status. The Coma Recovery Scale-Revised and Disability Rating Scale were used to track reemergence of target behaviors and assess degree of functional disability, respectively. Twenty percent (95% confidence interval [CI]: 13-30%) of participants (mean age 37.2; median 47 days post-injury; 69 men) recovered all six target behaviors within the 6 week observation period. The odds of recovering a specific target behavior were 3.2 (95% CI: 1.2-8.1) to 7.8 (95% CI: 2.7-23.0) times higher for patients in MCS than for those in VS. Patients with preserved language function ("MCS+") recovered the most behaviors (p ≤ 0.002) and had the least disability (p ≤ 0.002) at follow-up. These findings suggest that recovery of high-level behaviors underpinning functional independence is common in patients with prolonged traumatic DoC. Clinicians involved in early prognostic counseling should recognize that failure to emerge from traumatic DoC before 28 days does not necessarily portend unfavorable outcome

Endothelial Injury in Scleroderma

Scleroderma, which follows rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus as the third most prevalent rheumatic disorder, is poorly understood. Connective tissue abnormalities have been explored extensively (1); recently, vascular involvement has been emphasized as a unifying pathogenetic concept (2, 3). The vascular features in scleroderma include Raynaud\u27s phenomenon; an early, edematous phase of the disorder; telangiectasia; capillary abnormalities as seen by nailfold and ultrastructural microscopy; and widespread vascular pathology noted in all involved organs. The most striking histological abnormalities occur in small arteries and arterioles and consist of distinctive intimal proliferation of cells arranged concentrically in a matrix of ground substance; the cells are thought to originate from medial smooth muscle and to migrate toward the intima after injury to the endothelium (4). Evidence for endothelial injury includes: (a) the disappearance of endothelium in association with thrombosis or fibrinoid necrosis in ultrastructural studies; (b) the absence of endothelial cells within the thickened intima (4, 3) the duplication of basement membrane, a common observation in scleroderma and known to occur after endothelial perturbation in other settings. The ability to isolate, characterize, and maintain endothelial cells in vitro provides a target-cell population to study endothelial damage in scleroderma. The present report describes the effect of scleroderma serum on endothelial, smooth muscle, and fibroblast cell types. Sera from patients with scleroderma (31/52) and Raynaud\u27s syndrome (11/19) contain cytotoxic activity specific for endothelial cells which is nondialyzable, heat-stable, and elutes with albumin on gel-filtration chromatography

Realizing IT Value at Air Products and Chemicals, Inc.

How can senior IS executives successfully shepherd IT initiatives through complex organizations? This paper prescribes an integrated IT investment management process incorporating four recommended activities: *strategic planning, *quality function deployment, *activity analysis, and *responsibility assignment. The process, tools, methods, and organizational learning were drawn from two projects at Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. The integrated process for IT investment management can help senior IS executives prioritize projects and align responsibility and accountability for IT initiatives that require complementary organizational changes to activities across the entire value chain to realize full benefits

Merger and Acquisition Due Diligence: A Proposed Framework to Incorporate Data Privacy, Information Security, E-Discovery, and Information Governance into Due Diligence Practices

Merger and Acquisition or “M&A” deals are both figuratively and literally big business, where the stakes for the organization are often the highest. While casual observers might expect that the importance attached to these deals makes each new deal the vanguard for incorporating metrics and practices regarding every efficiency and contingency, existing research demonstrates that this is decidedly not the case