Understanding & Managing I/S Implementation In Socially Constructed Organizations

For over two decades, implementation has been studied by scholars adopting various perspectives. For example, implementation has been framed as an effective relationship(Churchman and Schainblatt, 1965), as an outcomethat is determined by individual, organizational and situational factors(Lucas, 1975; Schultz et al., 1984; DeSanctis, 1984), and as aprocess of organizational change(Ginzberg, 1978). This process view has been further developed by scholars influenced by the sociotechnical schoolof thought (Bostrom and Heinen, 1977; Markus, 1983; Robey, 1987), and this synthesized approach arguably represents the dominant approach for understanding IS implementation today. Within this perspective, an organization is implicitly conceptualized as a diamond consisting of interacting components: people, tasks, technology and structure. Introduction of an IS involves changing the technology component of the organization, which automatically triggers a change in the other components. Implementation essentially refers to anticipating and strategically managing these impacts of the change in technology(Robey, 1987) such that the IS becomes organizationally valid (Schultz and Slevin, 1975; Markus and Robey, 1983) as the organization attains a post-implementation steady-state. Scholars usually focus on interactions of different components of the diamond and recommend organizational impact management strategies such as job redesign, training or education, and changing the reward systems. While this interactionist approach represents considerable progress, it is argued that the underlying diamond model fails to reflect the political underpinnings (Keen, 1981; Markus, 1983) and institutional realities such as symbols (Hirschheim and Newman, 1991) and frames (Orlikowski, 1992) sufficiently. This paper attempts to enrich the existing organizational model based on insights from Berger and Luckmann\u27s work in the arena of sociology of knowledge, and through the application of this enriched model, contribute to the stream of sociotechnical literature on IS implementation. The basic thesisof the paper is as follows: Prior conceptualizations of organizations have recognized only objective realities which has led to an incomplete understanding of implementation; by including the analysis of subjective realities in the organization, a better understanding of political and institutional forces and of resistance arising from them may be gained. The following section develops the model. The next section provides guidelines for managing implementation that are derived from the model. The final section concludes with the limitations of the model and future research directions

A Model of Group Technology Acceptance: Some Preliminary Findings

While the literature on the technology acceptance model and its extensions have contributed significantly to our understanding of how individuals accept a technology, little is known about how groups accept technology. Since organizations are moving to collective structures such as groups that are provided with technologies for performing tasks, it is critical to understand how they accept and use technology so as to better guide organizations’ investments and implementation decisions. Drawing on theories of group influence, and prior research on group communication media and conflict, the paper proposes an input-process-output (I-P-O) model for conceptualizing group technology acceptance. We also present some preliminary empirical results that appear to support key aspects of the model

A Conceptual Framework for Understanding Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding is a rapidly growing technology-enabled process that has the potential to disrupt the capital market space. In order for this process to work efficiently, it is important to clarify the issues surrounding the phenomenon from the founders’, the backers’, and the technology providers’ viewpoints. We begin with an ecosystem view to understand the stakeholders and their roles in the crowdfunding process. We review the literature with a focus on how current research fits into the overall crowdfunding phenomenon. Guided by typology and classification research approaches, we identify six distinct crowdfunding business models: private equity, royalty, microfinance, peer-to-peer lending, rewards, and donation. Based on identified roles and crowdfunding business models, we propose a conceptual research framework. We conclude by showing how current research fits into our proposed framework and offer suggestions for future research directions

An Exploration into the Process of Requirements Elicitation: A Grounded Approach

Requirements elicitation (RE) is a critical phase in information systems development (ISD), having significant impacts on software quality and costs. While it has remained a key topic of interest for IS researchers, a review of the existing literature suggests that there are very few studies examining how the social process associated with RE unfolds. Prior literature acknowledges that this process involves collaboration between RE participants (e.g., user-reps and systems analysts) where knowledge regarding the system requirements is shared, absorbed, and co-constructed, such that shared mental models of the requirements can form. However, collaboration and knowledge sharing within the RE process has been characterized as tenuous in the literature, given that the groups of RE participants bring very different kinds of knowledge into this activity, and trust among the two parties cannot be guaranteed at any point. Despite acknowledgement of the tenuous nature of RE, we are not aware of research that has attempted to present an integrated view of how collaboration, knowledge transfer, and trust influence the RE process. Using data from two different organizations and adopting a grounded approach, this study presents an integrative process model of RE. The study’s findings suggest that RE is composed of four different collaborative states. The study elaborates on the four states, and identifies important factors that tend to trigger transitions from one state to another

Using a Case Study to Test the Role of Three Key Social Enablers in ERP Implementation

The literature indicates that three key social enablers—strong and committed leadership, open and honest communication, and a balanced and empowered implementation team—are necessary conditions/precursors for successful ERP implementation. In a longitudinal positivist case study, we find that, while all three enablers may contribute to ERP implementation success, only strong and committed leadership can be empirically established as a necessary condition. This presents a challenge to future ERP researchers for resolving apparent contradictions between the existing literature and the results of our analysis, and for investigating the nature of interactions among the leadership, communication, and team characteristics

Exploring Work-Life Conflict in Global Software Development (GSD) Contexts: A Survey of IT Professionals based in India

Global Software Development (GSD) is now a mega-trend. While there is a rich literature exploring various facets of the GSD phenomenon, few (if any) studies have focused on the working conditions of IT professionals, specifically their work-life conflict. In this paper, we discuss our research-in-progress on this issue, wherein we empirically examine the effects of four categories of relevant antecedents (individual factors, organizational factors, IS project-based factors, and the nature of personnel distribution in teams) on work-life conflict, and the effect of work-life conflict on outcome variables such as organizational commitment and individual’s performance. Analysis of data collected as part of an on-going study show that the measurement instruments are valid and reliable, and many of the hypothesized relationships hold. The aspiration of this study is to be among the first to empirically examine work-life conflict (WLC) issues in a GSD setting

Using a Positivist Case Research Methodology to Test a Theory About IT-Enabled Business Process Redesign

We derive a process theory, the “technology-oriented theory of business process redesign,” from the business process reengineering (BPR) literature and test it in a positivist case study of a corporation that implemented BPR. Our evidence refutes the theory. The future direction we suggest for researchers and practitioners is to adopt, from the beginning, an orientation that is not technocentric or overly technological, but gives equal consideration to social dimensions and the interactions between the social and the technological