The Emergent View of IT and Organizational Change

In the modern business world it is impossible to distinguish between technology and organization. All activities are somehow supported by technology and the nature and structure of organizations influence the technological development. For that reason it is crucial to recognize the reciprocal relationship between technology and organization, and acknowledge the phenomena as highly intertwined. This is the case in practice but it should also be reflected in associated research. In this paper, a bibliometric approach serves as the foundation for a study of whether a dynamic view of technology and organization is represented in affiliated scientific writings the last decade. More specifically, research in connection to information technology and organizational change is considered. The results from the investigation paint a scattered picture lacking clear indications of a tendency suggesting a move from a deterministic towards an emergent scientific view of these concepts

Bibliometric Study of Academic Interaction: IT, Organization, and Change

This paper explores the degree and nature of the research interaction between the academic fields of Information Technology, Organization, and Organizational Change. This is done so as to see if, and how, the highly digitized modern business world is reflected in related research. The paper analyses 9.669 articles published in 1995-2006 that are derived from major journals within each field. Then the articles are reviewed through the use of the bibliometric methods: frequency, cross-reference, cocitation, shared references, and network analyses. The findings detect a dearth of consistent research interaction between the fields of Information Technology, Organization, and Organizational Change. This fact is critiqued on the basis of previous practical and academic calls for interactional research. The paper provides important insights about the degree and nature of the research interaction and, in addition, recommendations and guidelines for future cross-fertilization between the academic fields are provided

Play It Again, Sam – Bringing Men Back In

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of human agency in large scale organizational change. In doing so, I open the black-box of agency. Organizational change research is pre-dominated by a structure perspective and this paper answers the recent calls for an increased focus on agency. More specifically it investigates where human agency resides, who the actors are and how they exercise agency during organizational change. These questions are explored by following the telecom company Ericsson’s global transformation of its F&A unit (Finance and Accounting) from a decentralised structure into a so-called shared-service-center structure. The data collection consists of in-depth interviews and observations. An extensive amount of archival records were gathered from the respondents and observations were conducted. The analysis process was inspired by a grounded theory approach were both induction and deduction was employed iteratively until the point of saturation. The findings exhibit the importance of situated knowledge, cognitive and emotional elements of receptivity and moderating factors such as tools for global organizational change. The case-study also underlines the significance of applying both top-down and bottom-up approaches regarding organizational change. The paper concludes by illustrating how the result invites for a more complex understanding of agency in large-scale global organizational change.Presented at the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Managements (EIASM) 3rdworkshop on organisational change & development: advances, challenges & contradictions,Bucharest, Romania, 26 - 27 September, 2008

Leading IT-Enabled Change Inside Ericsson : A Transformation Into a Global Network of Shared Service Centres

The purpose of this thesis is to explore—from a managerial perspective—how IT-enabled change is designed, led, and sustained from-within an organisation. This is an issue of central concern because there is a considerable lack of research that directly incorporates IT in management and organisational change studies. In addition, earlier research has recurrently focused on abstract theorising, aggregated perspectives, and exploring organisational change from the outside, from-without. Consequently, the present body of research provides limited knowledge of how organisations in practice lead large-scale IT-enabled transformations. The thesis herein sets out to explore this question, and does so by following the change designers and agents of the telecommunications company Ericsson, that transformed its finance and accounting unit from a highly decentralised structure into a shared service centre structure (SSC) entitled: “The Global F&A Transformation Programme”. The formal transformation lasted three years, was enabled by an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, and was driven in the majority of Ericsson’s sub-units situated in more than 140 countries. Theoretically, this thesis addresses the research question: how do actors and structures influence large-scale IT-enabled change? The principal finding of the thesis is a four-stage analytical framework built on the concepts of common ground, common meaning, common interest, and common behaviour: The Commonality Framework for IT-enabled Change. The value of the framework is that it depicts the interplay between actors and structures on a micro-level. In doing so, the framework explains the different levels of complexity in a transformation and how they require different structures to be used, different activities to be performed, different skills to be applied, and different roles to be played. The framework can be used by both academics and practitioners to develop, assess, and improve IT-enabled change projects. In a broader perspective, the findings further suggest that change comes about as an upward spiral, within which the moving targets of IT and organisation are intimately interconnected. This reciprocal interconnectedness between IT and organisation across time implies that if changes are done to technological properties, this necessitates changes to the organisational properties, and vice versa. Organisations at the hands-on-level more or less have to change to make use of the IT-enabled advantages. Thus, successful IT-enabled change is more than the technology artefact per se, and requires thoughtful attentiveness not only to the technological and material side, but also to the organisational, social and human side of change. The theoretical contribution of this thesis is the in-depth exposition of different aspects and interplays between the properties of actors and structures from-within the organisation. The empirical contribution is the description of how contemporary multinational organisations initiate, lead, and sustain large-scale IT-enabled change.The provided document is only the summary and introductory chapter of the thesis (i.e. excluding the five papers). If you want more information about the thesis as a whole please contact the author [email protected]

Play It Again, Sam – Bringing Men Back In

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of human agency in large scale organizational change. In doing so, I open the black-box of agency. Organizational change research is pre-dominated by a structure perspective and this paper answers the recent calls for an increased focus on agency. More specifically it investigates where human agency resides, who the actors are and how they exercise agency during organizational change. These questions are explored by following the telecom company Ericsson’s global transformation of its F&A unit (Finance and Accounting) from a decentralised structure into a so-called shared-service-center structure. The data collection consists of in-depth interviews and observations. An extensive amount of archival records were gathered from the respondents and observations were conducted. The analysis process was inspired by a grounded theory approach were both induction and deduction was employed iteratively until the point of saturation. The findings exhibit the importance of situated knowledge, cognitive and emotional elements of receptivity and moderating factors such as tools for global organizational change. The case-study also underlines the significance of applying both top-down and bottom-up approaches regarding organizational change. The paper concludes by illustrating how the result invites for a more complex understanding of agency in large-scale global organizational change.Presented at the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Managements (EIASM) 3rdworkshop on organisational change & development: advances, challenges & contradictions,Bucharest, Romania, 26 - 27 September, 2008

Transparency and accountability influences of regulation on risk control : the case of a Swedish bank

This qualitative in-depth case study explores the influence of financial regulation on risk control within Banque de Montagne, a large listed bank in Sweden. Specifically, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of the European Banking Authority´s Guidelines on Internal Governance (GL 44), through Swedish Financial Regulation FFFS 2014:1, on the bank’s risk organization along the three lines of defense model of internal control. FFFS 2014:1 requires banks to reform risk control structures, processes, and roles through a mandated split between the operational risk and compliance functions of the internal risk organization. Through an analysis of 41 interviews, more than 2100 pages of internal and external documents, and over 200 hours of observations from 2015 to 2017, the research identifies the relevant changes to transparency and accountability mechanisms across the three lines of defense within the organization. The operationalization of these concepts through risk control mechanisms is an important consideration for both banks and regulators who rely on the three lines of defense model as an industry-wide adoption for effective risk control. The findings suggest that whilst intra- and inter-organizational accountability mechanisms have strengthened under the changed organizational structure through the implementation of FFFS 2014:1, challenges to effective transparency remain and may have ambiguous consequences for both organizational and regulatory aims