A fundamental tenet of the information systems (IS) discipline holds that: (a) a lack of formal power and influence over the organization targeted for change, (b) weak support from top management, and (c) organizational memories of prior failures are barriers to implementation success. Our research, informed by organization influence, compellingly illustrates that such conditions do not necessarily doom a project to failure. In this paper, we present an analysis of how an IS implementation team designed and enacted a coordinated strategy of organizational influence to achieve implementation success despite these barriers. Our empirical analysis also found that technology implementation and change is largely an organizational influence process (OIP), and thus technical-rational approaches alone are inadequate for achieving success. Our findings offer managers important insights into how they can design and enact OIPs to effectively manage IS implementation. Further, we show how the theory of organizational influence can enhance understanding of IS implementation dynamics and advance the development of a theory of effective IS change agentry. © 2014 Operational Research Society Ltd. All rights reserved.

New technology implementation projects are notoriously over time and budget resulting in significant financial and strategic organizational consequences. Some argue that inadequate planning and management, misspecification of requirements, team capabilities and learning contribute to cost and schedule over runs. In this paper we examine how learning curve theory could inform better management of new technology implementation projects. Our research makes four important contributions: (1) It presents a comparative analysis of learning curves and proposes how they can be used to help ERP implementation planning and management. (2) Based on empirical data from four ERP implementation projects, it provides illustrations of how managers can apply the curves in different project situations. (3) It provides a theoretical basis for empirical studies of learning and ERP (and other IT) implementations in different organizational settings. (4) It provides empirical justification for the development of learning curve theory in IT implementation. Crown Copyright © 2009.

In this paper, we explore the issues related to the generation gap in the use of information and communication technologies through an examination of relevant literature and findings from empirical field research in community-based telecenters in a developing country. Our findings show that intergenerational interaction is a key issue and social relations and interactions are explored through an analysis of social networks in conjunction with social identity theory and social representations theory. A conceptual framework is developed of the impact of intergenerational interactions at telecenters on community development. © 2010 Commonwealth Secretariat.

In recent years, several case studies have appeared on how mobile telephones, SMS and the Internet had an impact on political activities. It has been widely argued that information and communication technology (ICT) is influencing democracy all over the world. However, few studies provide any analysis of how ICT expansion correlates with measures of democracy. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between the global expansion of ICT and the level of democracy within nations. We analyze archival data on 133 countries from 1995 to 2003, which was the period-of-time of explosive ICT expansion. Some important findings of our study are: (a) there is a growing digitaldivide in democratic freedoms among countries; (b) in spite of rapid ICT expansion in some countries, Internet filtering is having a significant impact on democratic freedoms. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Software Process Improvement (SPI) projects are large-scale, complex organization-wide change initiatives. They require considerable investments in personnel, time and money and impact just about every aspect of software firms. The group charged with conducting an SPI project has, however, little formal authority to influence or force software professionals to engage in SPI work or to define and implement changes. The SPI literature suggests that successful SPI initiatives depend on strong commitment from top management. But what should the SPI group do if management support is weak? In this paper, we present an analysis of how an SPI group can use alliances to obtain influence and succeed when management support is weak. Our study is based on a 3-year longitudinal field study of SPI change initiatives at Denmark Electronics. Our findings show that a lack of top management support is not necessarily incompatible with success. This research opens an important new area of research on intra-organizational alliances and information system (IS) implementation. It has the potential to offer new theories and practical advice on how IS implementation projects can be more effectively managed.

Since the 1980s, there has been a growing body of critical theory in information systems research. A central theoretical foundation of this research is Habermas’ theory of communicative action, which focuses on implications of speech and proposes general normative standards for communication. Habermas also places particular emphasis on the importance of the public sphere in a democratic society, critiquing the role of the media and other actors in shaping public discourse. While there has been growing emphasis on critical discourse analysis (CDA), there has been limited effort to systematically apply Habermas’ validity claims to empirical research. Moreover, while critical research in information systems has examined communication within the organizational context, public discourse on information technology has received little attention. The paper makes three primary contributions: (1) it responds to Habermas’ call for empirical research to ground and extend his theory of communication in every day critical practice; (2) it proposes an approach to applying Habermas’ theory of communication to CDA; and (3) it extends the reach of critical research in information systems beyond micro-level organizational concerns and opens up to critical reflection and debate on the impact of systematically distorted communication about technology in the public sphere.

High-quality information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure is essential for developing countries to achieve rapid economic growth. International trade and the structure of the global economy require a level of integration that is achievable only with sophisticated infrastructure. Since the early 1990s, international institutions have been pushing developing nations to deregulate and heavily invest in ICT infrastructure as a strategy for accelerating socioeconomic development. After more than a decade of continued investments, some countries have still not achieved expected outcomes. Recently, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has called for empirical research to assess the performance and impact of ICT expansion in developing countries. In this article, we respond to this call by investigating factors affecting the efficiency of ICT expansion in five emerging economies in Latin America. Our findings demonstrate that deregulation is not enough to effect efficient ICT expansion, and we argue that existing conditions (economic factors, human capital, geography, and civil infrastructure factors) must also be considered. We conclude by asserting that policy makers can more easily realize socioeconomic development via ICTs if they consider these conditions while cultivating their technology strategies. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Managing international teams with geographically distributed participants is a complex task. The risk of communication breakdowns increases due to cultural and organizational differences grounded in the geographical distribution of the participants. Such breakdowns indicate general misunderstandings and a lack of shared meaning between participants. In this paper, we address the complexity of building shared meaning. We examine the communication breakdowns that occurred in two globally distributed virtual teams by providing an analytical distinction of the organizational context as the foundation for building shared meaning at three levels. Also we investigate communication breakdowns that can be attributed to differences in lifeworld structures, organizational structures, and work process structures within a virtual team. We find that all communication breakdowns are manifested and experienced by the participants at the work process level; however, resolving breakdowns may require critical reflection at other levels. Where previous research argues that face-to-face interaction is an important variable for virtual team performance, our empirical observations reveal that communication breakdowns related to a lack of shared meaning at the lifeworld level often becomes more salient when the participants are co-located than when geographically distributed. Last, we argue that creating translucence in communication structures is essential for building shared meanings at all three levels. © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

In the past two decades, we have seen increasing debate about information and communication technology (ICT) as an engine of growth that could lift developing nations out of poverty. Many African nations have implemented market liberalization and invested huge sums of money into their ICT sectors. But few studies have been conducted to assess the effectiveness of these investments. Demonstrating ICT sector performance is especially important because of challenges of the development of ICT policy and the United Nations agencies inability to state firmly if there are benefits to these investments. In this article, we investigated the total factor productivity (TFP) of the ICT sectors in six West African countries from 1995 to 2002. While the findings demonstrate positive growth in TFP, there is cause for concern. TFP growth in the ICT sector has been declining, and these countries are not yet able to take advantage of scale efficiencies. Careful attention must be given to future ICT investment strategies and performance management of existing ICT infrastructure if continued growth is to be achieved. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Predicting successful implementation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems is still an elusive problem. The cost of ERP implementation failures is exceedingly high in terms of quantifiable financial resources and organizational disruption. The lack of good explanatory and predictive models makes it difficult for managers to develop and plan ERP implementation projects with any assurance of success. In this paper we investigate the Klein & Sorra theoretical model of implementation effectiveness. To test this model we develop and validate a data collection instrument to capture the appropriate data, and then use multivariate adaptive regression splines to examine the assertions of the model and suggest additional significant relationships among the factors of their model. Our research offers new dimensions for studying managerial interventions in IT implementation and insights into factors that can be managed to improve the effectiveness of ERP implementation projects.