This paper describes the impact of Critical Success Factors (CSFs) across the stages of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementations using the responses from 86 organizations that completed or are in the process of completing an ERP implementation. Our results provide advice to management on how best to utilize their limited resources to choose those CSFs that are most likely to have an impact upon the implementation of the ERP system.

In an important ISR research commentary, Orlikowski and Iacono [2001] argue that the IS field does not deeply engage in its core subject matter, “the IT artifact. ” Although agreeing with their analysis and their conclusions concerning the unfortunate lack of engagement with the IT artifact, this article questions their premise that the IT artifact should be viewed as the core of the IS field. After defining the term “work system ” and summarizing previously published frameworks for understanding a work system in operation and a work system life cycle, this article presents 18 reasons why IT-reliant work systems should replace “the IT artifact ” as the core of the IS field. Taken in combination, the 18 reasons express a belief that today’s IS field is inherently work system-centric, rather than IT-centric even though IT artifacts are present wherever the IS discipline is genuinely relevant. The specific reasons involve important topics including IS success, IS costs, IS risks, IS life cycles, methods for analyzing systems, communication with business professionals, organizing and codifying knowledge about systems in organizations, and maximizing the value of IS research.

Deregulation, unstable financial markets, increasing global competition, advances in information and communication technologies- these are only a few of the conditions driving the escalating pace of change evident within business communities today. Harnessing an organisation of people who thrive on the challenges of ambiguity, complexity and uncertainty and who can successfully and rapidly implement strategic and operational changes, is seen as a differentiating core competence for competitive companies. Today, technology and information systems are usually key enabling factors when organisations embrace major change strategies, but it is becoming evident that to leverage strategic opportunities from advances in information systems and enabling technologies such as the internet, intranets and e-commerce, good change management practices must be adopted. In this paper we derive a framework for assessing training programmes for change agents, based on an extensive review of the literature on change management models and the skills and competencies necessary to manage change successfully. This framework provides a basis for identifying pedagogical objectives for teaching change management to executives, IT specialists, change agents and change recipients. As an illustration, the framework is applied to evaluate the effectiveness of a computer based multimedia simulation, a training tool known as the EIS Simulation, in satisfying these pedagogical objectives. 1.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) standard package software has become a key contributor to attempts at aligning business and IT strategies in recent years. The past decade has witnessed a shift from the need to manage transactions to that of the need to manage relationships. Where Enterprise Resource Planning software dominated the management of transactions era, CRM software leads in regard to relationships. At present, a balanced view of CRM software is scantly presented instead relying on vendor rhetoric. This paper aims to make a contribution to this neglected area by presenting an analysis of some of the key issues associated with CRM systems. Three issues emerge: the limitations of CRM standard software, the need for a holistic view of CRM projects and the problems of a dominant management perspective of CRM projects. It is argued that these issues could be more readily accommodated by organisational detachment from beliefs in IT as utopia, consideration of prior IS theory and practice and a more informed approach to CRM software selection. The paper also raises research questions in relation to CRM systems, IT maturity, standard software trends and the role of the IS function. 1.

This paper builds on ideas in a recent paper which argued that the core subject matter of the IS field should not be “the IT artifact ” (as suggested by Orlikowski and Iacono [1]), but rather IT-intensive work systems. This paper extends the ideas in the previous paper by exploring whether pervasive real time IT might be a disruptive technology [2] for the IS field, implying that the long term vibrancy and impact of the field depends on a change in focus and scope that emphasizes some version of work system concepts. This paper defines the term “work system ” and explains that information systems, projects, value chains, and supply chains are all special cases that should inherit work system terminology, generalizations, and success factors. It summarizes six real world examples to demonstrate different types of overlap between work systems and information systems that support them. Comparison of these systems shows that many of today’s more interesting information systems reflect a trend toward pervasive real time IT, i.e., increasingly commonplace application of IT to automate work practices or support and control them in real time. As this trend continues, the overlap between information systems and the work systems they support will increase, leading to a situation in which studying just the information system but not the work system it supports will have less and less significance. The paper concludes by arguing that the IS field needs to encompass work systems that do more than processing information. Expansion in this direction has implications for analyzing systems, conceptualizing system life cycles, communicating with business professionals, interpreting and performing research, and establishing different relationships with other academic fields such as organization behavior and operations management. 1.

Many scientific fields share common interests for research and education. Yet, very often, these fields do not communicate to each other and are unaware of the work in other fields. Understanding the commonalities and differences among related fields can broaden our understanding of the interested phenomena from various perspectives, better utilize resources, enhance collaboration, and eventually move the related fields forward together. In this article, we present a conceptual framework, namely the Information-Model or I-model, to describe various aspects of information related fields. We consider this a timely effort in light of the evolutions of several information related fields and a set of questions related to the identities of these fields. It is especially timely in defining the newly formed Information Field from a community of twenty some information schools. We posit that the information related fields are built on a number of other fields but with their own unique foci and concerns. That is, core components from other fundamental fields interact and integrate with each other to form dynamic and interesting information related fields that all have to do with information, technology, people, and organization/society. The conceptual framework can have a number of uses. Besides providing a unified view of these related fields, it can be used to examine old case studies, recent research projects, educational programs and curricula concerns, as well as to illustrate the commonalities and differences with the information related fields.

The quality of evidence in knowledge management research: practitioner versus scholarly literature

This paper presents a model of digital network evolution based on early research findings on Intranet implementation in American corporations. This evolution process is described as a three-step, cyclical model: automation, experimentation, and reconfiguration. These steps are rooted in the existing literature on the study of technology and organizations. The suggested co-evolution model builds upon existing theories and models, and goes one step further by suggesting a cyclical pattern of co-evolution and the simultaneous reconfiguration of technology and organization. Intranets and Organizational Change 3 Digital networks and Organizational Change: The Evolutionary Deployment of Corporate Information Infrastructure I. Corporate networks: the magic rod? IT-enabled corporate networks have become a crucial part of American businesses' strategy. No longer considered a "utility", like water or electrical networks, they instead serve to define and articulate the transformation of busine...

There is a growing consensus that the benefits of information technology (IT) can not be realised fully by merely automating existing business processes. Consequently, major process changes enabled by IT, including business process re-engineering efforts, have been popular in North America and are now being introduced all over the world. Differences between nations and societies make it critical to understand how institutional and cultural factors influence IT application and the nature of ITenabled business process change. This article focuses on the impact of societal culture and systematically employs the dimensions identified by Hofstede and Bond in order to develop a comprehensive set of researchable propositions. The propositions, which are illustrated using a case study from Hong Kong, provide an agenda for researching the impact of societal culture on IT-enabled business process change.

organisations: a model for change management