ERP\u27s Best Practices and Change: An Organizational Memory Mismatch Approach

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems implementations undertaken all over the world have resulted and continue to result in significant organizational change. Organizations adopt ERP systems to benefit from the underpinning (allegedly) best practices, the suppliers’ or sometimes consultants’ “recipes” for conducting successful business. Such practices are said to lead to considerable improvements in the way the business performs, emphasizing the functioning and management of business processes. However, the implementation and use of best practices remains highly problematic! Here, we conceptualize ERP’s best practices in terms of organizational routines, which are considered to be “repositories” of organizational memory. Memory mismatches are at the core of our (metaphorical) lens to surface understandings of what goes wrong and how people negotiate solutions, both during the implementation and, more importantly, the in-use phases of ERP systems. Looking from an organizational memory mismatch perspective provides us with interesting insights into the challenges and opportunities for implementing and managing change in this context, giving an appealing structure for reasoning about ERP’s best practices. Illustrations from a case study of a Dutch SME are presented to enrich our account. The overall thrust of the paper is to identify a variety of concerns, intriguing questions and avenues for future research

Diagnosing Organizational Memory Mismatches in the ERP Usage Stage

Disparities may exist between memory elements (such as knowledge and information) embedded in an organization’s ERP package and related memory elements located in other organizational memory media. This paper presents the Systematic Analysis Method of Memory Mismatches (SAMMM). Three types of such disparities, called memory mismatches here, have been observed by applying SAMMM to the usage stage of ERP systems. Because SAMMM includes the analysis of causes of memory mismatches, it can be used as a starting point for improving ERP performance. Additional research may focus on the enhancement and application of SAMMM combined with coping methods

The Limits of an Ostrich Policy for Resolving Dialectical Conflicts

In this paper, we analyze the introduction of the Australian Integrated Cargo System (ICS) in order to improve our understanding of eCustoms innovations in Europe, primarily Single Window services. We combine the case study with a theorization based on socially constructed change in networks. The development and diffusion of eCustoms solutions takes place within an elaborate network of businesses, government agencies, and technology providers. We focus on the ongoing dialectics during change in such a network. This means we zoom in on the constant confrontations and conflicts of both interests and understandings of contents, processes, and outcomes of change. These conflicts potential shift change in unintended and unwanted directions, resulting in perceived failure. We critically reflect on the practical lessons that surfaced from the Australian ICS-Import case, where we observed a tendency to avoid facing conflicts, ignoring them, or dismissing them as not important. Our analysis demonstrates that using a dialectic approach can provide substantial insights in eCustoms innovation. We offer a characterization of conflicts and we contribute to the discussion of eCustoms in Europe

The organizational memory mismatch approach in the ERP usage stage

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems not only have a broad functional scope promising to support many different business processes. They also embed many different aspects of the company’s organizational memory. Disparities can exist between those memory contents in the ERP system and related contents in other memory media, such as the individuals’ memories, and the organizational structure and culture. Such discrepancies, called memory mismatches here, may cause various instances of ERP under-performance, thus triggering the need for coping behavior in the organization. Coping may take place in the form of organizational change, organizational learning, and software maintenance. This paper provides a theoretical framework for this organizational memory mismatch approach. The approach is applied to the ERP usage stage. It integrates the organizational, technological, and cognitive aspects of ERP systems, while combining and elaborating on the underpinning ERP and IS literature

Moving an eInnovation from a Living Lab to the Real World: Politically Savvy Framing in ITAIDE\u27s Beer Living Lab

Living Labs have been established as real-life pilot settings in which IT innovations are developed and validated. Once these steps have been completed, these innovations are ready to be moved out of the Living Lab environment into the real world. In many cases Living Lab innovations require not only technological but also socio-political and institutional changes to be made in order for them to be adopted. The need of socio-political and institutional changes becomes especially visible in cases where Living Lab participants attempt to propose innovative solutions for domains that are highly regulated. The reason for that is that in such cases, often the existing legal requirement would need to be adjusted first, in order to create grounds for the further adoption of the innovation. The question as to how to achieve such legal changes related to Living Lab innovations in a highly regulated environment has received vey limited attention. In this paper, we specifically focus on understanding of framing processes and how they are used by the Living Lab participants in a politically savvy way to mobilize a multi-level network of actors in their attempts to bring institutional change. We further investigate this framework through a case study involving a variety of framing processes that took place in the Beer Living Lab. The Beer Living Lab is part of the ITAIDE project that aims to develop and test an eCustoms solution for international trade. In addition to our contribution of the conceptual framework and the accompanying empirical case study, we also identify further implications for practitioners who are involved in similar Living Labs in highly regulated environments

Construction, start-up and operation of a continuously aerated laboratory-scale SHARON reactor in view of coupling with an Anammox reactor

In this study practical experiences during start-up and operation of a laboratory-scale SHARON reactor are discussed, along with the construction of the reactor. Special attention is given to the start-up in view of possible toxic effects of high nitrogen concentrations (up to 4 000 mgN(.)l(-1)) on the nitrifier population and because the reactor was inoculated with sludge from an SBR reactor operated under completely different conditions. Because of these considerations, the reactor was first operated as an SBR to prevent biomass washout and to allow the selection of a strong nitrifying population. A month after the inoculation the reactor was switched to normal chemostat operation. As a result the nitrite oxidisers were washed out and only the ammonium oxidisers persisted in the reactor. In this contribution also some practical considerations concerning the operation of a continuously aerated SHARON reactor, such as mixing, evaporation and wall growth are discussed. These considerations are not trivial, since the reactor will be used for kinetic characterisation and modelling studies. Finally the performance of the SHARON reactor under different conditions is discussed in view of its coupling with an Anammox unit. Full nitrification was proven to be feasible for nitrogen loads up to 1.5 gTAN-N(.)l(-1.)d(-1), indicating the possibility of the SHARON process to treat highly loaded nitrogen streams. Applying different influent concentrations led to different effluent characteristics indicating the need for proper control of the SHARON reactor

A Collective Action Perspective on Technological Innovation in Business/Government Networks

The history of Information Systems knows numerous examples of IT-enabled innovations which fail to get adopted due to social, political and legal issues. This is especially the case in highly regulated environments, where regulation or existing industry practices need to be changed first, in order to establish grounds for the further adoption of the innovative IT-based solutions. In this paper we explore the domain of customs (with a focus on cross-border trade) as an example of a highly regulated environment. Our main objective is to provide insights into how such institutional practices can be changed by using the lens of “the collective action model for institutional innovation” (Hargrave and Van de Ven, 2006). The collective action model builds on the dialectic theory of change, where an established thesis is confronted with an anti-thesis to lead to a synthesis, which becomes the thesis for the new dialectic cycle (Van de Ven and Poole, 1995). We applied the model to a specific kind of eCustoms innovation project for cross-border trade, the Beer Living Lab, to see whether it is helpful to explain the attempts of the innovators to bring their ideas further. We found out that the dialectic theory of change, which is the basis for the model, as well as the key concepts: framing contest, construction of the networks, enactment of institutional arrangements (and specifically the notion of political opportunity structures) were very helpful sensitizing devices and useful in understanding and discussing in a structured way the developments that we observe in the Beer Living Lab. Even though we did not have sufficient data with respect to the fourth concept of the model, i.e.“collective action process”, we consider the concept was helpful as it stimulated us to think and formulate a number of questions that we can further explore during the forthcoming stages in the Beer Living Lab. Based on the case analysis, we came to a number of insights which may be used to further develop the collective action model, as well as for developing strategies for bringing IT-based innovations in highly regulated environment. First of all, we observed that the notion of construction of networks proposed by Hargrave and Van de Ven is very general and we proposed further conceptualization by using the analytical categories: levels, horizontal interaction and vertical interaction. This further conceptualization allowed capturing, in a structured way, the diversity of actors and interactions that play a role in the mobilization of the network in the Beer Living Lab. Second, from the case analysis we found out that the Beer Living Lab solution was framed very closely to the relevant problems that the EU struggles to address and states in its strategic reports. This indicates a clear linkages between the categories “Framing contests” and “Political opportunity structure” (the latter being part of “Enactment of institutional arrangement”) proposed by Hargave and Van de Ven. A possible field for further research is to provide extension of the collective action model by explicitly explore further the linkage between “Framing” and “Political opportunity structures”. It may be that the innovative solutions have better chance to be institutionalized if they are properly framed according to the existing political opportunity structures. Third, from the case we also gained insights that it may be worth exploring the linkage between the categories “Framing contests” and the “construction of networks”. In the specific networks that we explored in the Beer Living Lab it is not sufficient that only one type of actors commit to the solution, rather all the actors involved in the transaction will need to commit. The further exploration of such linkages may provide insight on strategic choices that can be made when mobilizing a collective action for institutional innovation in the context of cross-border trade. While we applied the model in the specific context of eCustoms, we consider that our findings may be relevant for bringing IT-based innovations in other highly-regulated domains (e.g. energy and heath care). The explorations of these other domains can be a subject for further research

40 years of multi-faceted change in the Dutch Tax and Customs Administration

A major challenge for European governments is solving the dilemma of increasing security and control of international trade, while at the same time reducing the administrative overhead carried by commercial and public administration organizations. Process redesign and use of ICT are widely perceived as key components of a solution. Thus, we see that many ICT-driven change efforts have taken and continue to take place under the header of eGovernment. These changes are not always successful, however, and not yet wellunderstood. In this article, we provide an interpretive longitudinal account of the strategic IS efforts at the Dutch Tax and Customs Administration (DTCA). Instead of focusing on IS that supports the government itself or the relations between governments and citizens, we seek to contribute to the sparse literature that is specifically directed at the interactions between EU initiatives in eGovernment, national governments, and businesses. By providing a narrative of DTCA that spans multiple levels and multiple time frames, we seek to explore eGovernment developments from the 1960s to now. We discuss our findings by examining the changes at DTCA building primarily on Van de Ven & Poole's (1995) work "Explaining development and change in organizations" in which they describe four "motors of change" – life cycle, teleology, dialectics, and evolution – and we combine it with some of Pettigrew's ideas on change. This combinatory theory offers a way of thinking about the occurrence of change in a dynamic context, both for researchers and practitioners. A key implication is that the theory is not only useful retrospectively, but can also be used to identify "running motors" and as such, awareness of the complexities and dynamics of these change processes can provide an impetus for managers and action researchers to identify challenges and opportunities to influence change. Keywords: eGovernment, eCustoms, regulation, organizational change, longitudinal, historical, interpretiv

Histone 2B monoubiquitination complex integrates transcript elongation with RNA processing at circadian clock and flowering regulators

Altres ajuts: CERCA Programme/Generalitat de CatalunyaHISTONE MONOUBIQUITINATION1 (HUB1) and its paralog HUB2 act in a conserved heterotetrameric complex in the chromatin-mediated transcriptional modulation of developmental programs, such as flowering time, dormancy, and the circadian clock. The KHD1 and SPEN3 proteins were identified as interactors of the HUB1 and HUB2 proteins with in vitro RNA-binding activity. Mutants in SPEN3 and KHD1 had reduced rosette and leaf areas. Strikingly, in spen3 mutants, the flowering time was slightly, but significantly, delayed, as opposed to the early flowering time in the hub1-4 mutant. The mutant phenotypes in biomass and flowering time suggested a deregulation of their respective regulatory genes CIRCADIAN CLOCK-ASSOCIATED1 (CCA1) and FLOWERING LOCUS C (FLC) that are known targets of the HUB1-mediated histone H2B monoubiquitination (H2Bub). Indeed, in the spen3-1 and hub1-4 mutants, the circadian clock period was shortened as observed by luciferase reporter assays, the levels of the CCA1α and CCA1β splice forms were altered, and the CCA1 expression and H2Bub levels were reduced. In the spen3-1 mutant, the delay in flowering time was correlated with an enhanced FLC expression, possibly due to an increased distal versus proximal ratio of its antisense COOLAIR transcript. Together with transcriptomic and double-mutant analyses, our data revealed that the HUB1 interaction with SPEN3 links H2Bub during transcript elongation with pre-mRNA processing at CCA1. Furthermore, the presence of an intact HUB1 at the FLC is required for SPEN3 function in the formation of the FLC-derived antisense COOLAIR transcripts