Combining a Structuration Approach with a Behavioral-Based Model to Investigate ERP Usage

Enterprise resources planning systems (ERP), commercial software packages also known as integrated enterprise computing systems, can be viewed as currently one of the most challenging issues surrounding practitioners and researchers in the IS field. The ERP implementation is characterized by a long-term and complex process with high degree of interdependencies and a mandatory context for its users. Its consequences depend largely on the intensity and nature of its actual usage. This process can be analyzed under a structuration perspective, where the ongoing interaction between ERP and its users shape organizational changes and consequences over time. A synergy was sought combining in a single study the contribution of two distinct streams of thinking: the struturaction theory and the behavioral-based theories. The main objective of this paper is to provide a tool to investigate relevant factors affecting the ERP actual usage in organizations

Demystifying the Rhetorical Closure of ERP Packages

Understanding how information technology (IT) transforms individual, organizational, and societal ways of being is becoming increasingly complex and discourses on IT present opportunity and risk as two inseparable sides of the same phenomenon. Among the themes that extend throughout practitioner literature, and have emerged gradually in the academic literature as well, ERP projects are illustrative of the opportunities and risks IT presents. In this essay, I propose a discussion centered on the ERP phenomenon as an exemplary illustration of a major question: why does rhetorical closure dominate some discourses about IT when, in fact, all technologies are social constructions, always open to change? Dealing with ideas borrowed from structurational and social constructivist streams of thinking, I identify occasions of ERP package negotiation and change at three levelsósegment, organization and individualódemystifying the rhetorical closure that seems to dominate public debate

From aseptic distance to passionate engagement: reflections about the place and value of participatory inquiry

In 2004, I published a book chapter that marked a first moment in my qualitative research journey. The methodological piece was a result of a challenge imposed by my doctoral committee for my thesis proposal defense two years prior, who invited me to ‘rigorously’ sustain the quality of a qualitative research project conducted under the premises of critical-interpretivism. This challenge indeed was a gift, as it provided me an opportunity, very early in my academic career, to deeply reflect about the meaning of doing qualitative research. Now, around fifteen years later, the invitation to write a thinkbox again represents a timely opportunity, as I found myself again reflecting … not on the dilemmas of doing non-mainstream qualitative research, but on the researcher's role itself. More precisely, I am seriously thinking about the role of distance and engagement to the value of the knowledge we produce with our academic work. In this essay, I redraw this entire journey—from 2004 to 2018—with the intent to nourish the dialog with my peers about the engagement of the academic community with transforming society for the better, and to provide some guidelines to doctoral students seeking to truly engage with transformational research

Implementation of Configurable Information Systems: Negotiations between Global Principles and Local Contexts

Among the new forms of technology that overwhelm information systems research and practice, configurable information systems refers to technologies that are built up from a range of components to meet the very specific requirements of a particular client organization. Software packages like enterprise resources planning (ERP) are good illustrations of configurable IS because they typically provide hundreds, or even thousands, of discrete features and data items that can be combined in multiple ways. They cannot be seen independently from their representations through external intermediaries (mediators), who “speak” for the technology by providing images, descriptions, policies, templates and, very often, solutions. From a critical-interpretive view, this paper proposes a new way of understanding the implementation of configurable solutions. Using seven retrospective case studies, we investigate the relationship built by clients and consultants during the configurational process, where visions of how the technology should operate are negotiated. Different degrees of dependencies are mutually constructed, maintained, and transformed in the long run, influencing the global- local negotiation and the project results. The main contribution of this research is (1) to recognize different patterns of mediation, i.e., different types of client-consultant relationships, and the different types of trajectories in terms of global-local negotiation these patterns are likely to produce; (2) to address how initial organizational decisions in terms of power and knowledge distribution between clients and consultants influence the negotiation between global principles and local contexts; and (3) to identify mediating strategies that may help organizations improve global-local negotiations and, hopefully, improve the benefit of embarking on such costly and risky projects

How to Design Online Models for Micro-lending in Developing Countries? Making Sense to MYC4 in Africa

This article explores a micro-lending platform linking investors mostly located in developed countries and micro-entrepreneurs located in Africa. At the heart of this social and economic innovation is the online auction model, a concept that has been intensively investigated and used in developed countries. However, little knowledge exists about how these new models are used and implemented in developing countries, and about how existing theories are able to explain such an emerging innovative phenomenon. The article makes two main contributions. First, it applies a theoretical pluralist approach to further improve our understanding of MYC4, an online auction model for micro-lending purposes being applied in Africa and selected as our case study. Secondly, it uses the understanding produced from data analysis of MYC4 to validate propositions derived from three theoretical approaches. Our analysis shows that the three theoretical approaches differ in their basic assumptions – critical dimensions – and in the usefulness of their propositions, two of them being more valuable than the third one for drawing up guidelines for designing and implementing online auction markets and for identifying implications regarding the role of information, technology and the stakeholders involved

Social use and consequences of PGIS in local communities: a structurationist analysis of Sierra Nevada Project

The aim of this paper is to understand the social use and the consequences of PGIS in local communities, more specifically in Sierra Nevada, Mexico. In order to investigate the use of ICT by communities, we applied a multilevel and structurationist framework that articulates three dimensions: context, process and content. The results of our study draw attention to the implications of using PGIS not only as a technological tool in the strict sense, but as a process with the potential to achieve commitment across different social groups, even if they have distinct interests and skills. In addition, the consequences of its use for the communities are more likely to be related to the effectiveness of the underlying learning and emancipation processes

The value of technology affordances to improve the management of nonprofit organizations

Purpose – This paper aims to investigate the benefits generated by the use of new technologies by nonprofit organizations, with focus on how these artefacts can improve their ability to achieve their social mission. Design/methodology/approach – To understand the potential use of technology by a nonprofit organization, the concept of affordance was applied. The authors propose a processual model of affordances’ interdependences that enrich the extant literature. Six nonprofit organizations in two Brazilian regions were deeply investigated using a multiple case study method. Findings – The authors identified new sub-categories of technology affordances, which are not just related to nonprofit but that could be also applied to other types, including for-profit. Sub-categories of affordances seem to play different roles in the actualization process. The authors are not proposing determinist connections among sub-categories, but they argue that they sustain some sub-categories precede or create the condition for others to emerge. Originality/value – Nonprofit organizations lack theoretical and empirical investigations on management in general and on technology management in particular. In its turn, the technology field does not pay much attention, both in terms of research and practice, to the specificities of the third sector where the nonprofit organizations operate. This process model of potential uses of new technologies that might favor nonprofit organizations contributes to the cross-fertilization between two distinct fields: third sector and technology management

Research methods in management: advances and applications

Abstrac

Banking Technology to Scale Microfinance: The Case of Correspondent Banking in Brazil

Significant population segments in developing countries have very limited access to basic financial services, such as bank accounts, savings or insurance. Meanwhile, the use of ICT is increasingly becoming an intrinsic part of banking business, rendering financial services easier and cheaper to develop and deliver. This paper focuses on ICT-based correspondent banking outlets, a technology that appeared in Brazil in recent years, which is considered a feasible alternative for delivering financial services to the poor. The aim of this paper is to investigate how the use of this particular technology was structured and how it has evolved over time to deliver an increasingly complex range of services. A conceptual model, combining three theoretical approaches, is proposed to make possible an original reading of the use of correspondent banking technology in Brazil and its implications for microfinance

Designing Solidarity Cryptocurrencies: Dialogic Tension Between Community-Centered and Techno-Centered Design Frames

While cryptocurrencies are related to profit-driven actors, communitarian movements have decades of experience with social-driven currencies, such as community currencies. This research investigates the meshing of these two disparate worlds that results in the design of a solidarity cryptocurrency, a phenomenon that connects the blockchain infrastructure of cryptocurrency to scaling the social perspective of community currencies. However, making the connection between these two technologies brings a new question to IS design: how can different frames from multiple social actors be integrated into designing a solidarity cryptocurrency infrastructure? We drew upon the design ethnography methodology and actively participated in designing a solidarity cryptocurrency to answer that question. Based on concepts from infrastructuring, a multi-relational and socio-technical approach to infrastructure designing, we propose that designing a solidarity cryptocurrency lies on a dialogic tension between techno-centered and community-centered frames, representing the relational process that emerges when connecting two disparate technologie