Master BA: Change Management (RUG)
Summary Managing Technological Change (2016/2017)
Exam grade: 10.0
This summary includes:
- A summary of the lectures, including the lecture slides
- Summary of the following literature:
Introduction
- [INTR1] Leonardi, P.M. 2012. "Materiality, Sociomateriality, and Socio-Technical
Systems: What Do These Terms Mean? How Are They Different? Do We Need
Them?," in Materiality and Organizing: Social Interaction in a Technological World,
P.M. Leonardi, B.A. Nardi and J. Kallinikos (eds.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University
Press, pp. 25-48.
- [INTR2] Orlikowski, W.J. 2000. "Using Technology and Constituting Structures: A
Practice Lensfor Studying Technology in Organizations," Organization Science (11:4),
pp. 404-428.
- [INTR3] Wade, M. 2015. "Digital Business Transformation - a Conceptual
Framework," Global Center for Digital Business Transformation, Lausanne,
Switzerland.
- [INTR4] Williams, R., and Edge, D. 1996. "The Social Shaping of Technology,"
Research Policy (25:6), pp. 865-899.
Theme A
- [A1] Lyytinen, K., and Newman, M. 2008. "Explaining Information Systems Change:
A Punctuated Socio-Technical Change Model," European Journal of Information
Systems (17:6), pp. 589-613.
- [A2] Soh, C., and Sia, S.K. 2005. "The Challenges of Implementing ‘Vanilla’
Versions of Enterprise Systems," MIS Quartely Executive (4:3), pp. 373-384.
- [A3] Strong, D.M., and Volkoff, O. 2010. "Understanding Organization-Enterprise
System Fit: A Path to Theorizing the Information Technology Artifact," MIS
Quarterly (34:4), pp. 731-756.
- [A4] Volkoff, O., Strong, D.M., and Elmes, M.B. 2007. "Technological
Embeddedness and Organizational Change," Organization Science (18:5), pp. 832-
848.
Theme B
- [B1] Ehie, I.C., and Madsen, M. 2005. "Identifying Critical Issues in Enterprise
Resource Planning (ERP) Implementation," Computers in Industry (56:6), pp. 545-
557.
- [B2] Markus, M.L. 2004. "Technochange Management: Using IT to Drive
Organizational Change," Journal of Information Technology (19:1), pp. 4-20.
- [B3] Matt, C., Hess, T., and Benlian, A. 2015. "Digital Transformation Strategies,"
Business & Information Systems Engineering (57:5), pp. 339-343.
- [B4] Scott, J.E., and Vessey, I. 2002. "Managing Risks in Enterprise Systems
Implementations," Communications of the ACM (45:4), pp. 74-81.
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,Theme C
- [C1] Bala, H., and Venkatesh, V. 2016. "Adaptation to Information Technology: A
Holistic Nomological Network from Implementation to Job Outcomes," Management
Science (62:1), pp. 159-179.
- [C2] Lapointe, L., and Rivard, S. 2005. "A Multilevel Model of Resistance to
Information Technology Implementation," MIS Quarterly (29:3), pp. 461-491.
- [C3] Sun, H. 2012. "Understanding User Revisions When Using Information System
Features: Adaptive System Use and Triggers," MIS Quarterly (36:2), pp. 453-478.
- [C4] Yamauchi, Y., and Swanson, E.B. 2010. "Local Assimilation of an Enterprise
System: Situated Learning by Means of Familiarity Pockets," Information and
Organization (20:3-4), pp. 187-206.
Theme D
- [D1] Bagayogo, F.F., Lapointe, L., and Bassellier, G. 2014. "Enhanced Use of IT: A
New Perspective on Post-Adoption," Journal of the Association for Information
Systems (15:7), pp. 361-387.
- [D2] Burton-Jones, A., and Grange, C. 2013. "From Use to Effective Use: A
Representation Theory Perspective," Information Systems Research (24:3), pp. 632-
658.
- [D3] Staehr, L., Shanks, G., and Seddon, P.B. 2012. "An Explanatory Framework for
Achieving Business Benefits from ERP Systems," Journal of the Association for
Information Systems (13:6), pp. 424-465.
- [D4] Wagner, E.L., Newell, S., and Piccoli, G. 2010. "Understanding Project Survival
in an ES Environment: A Sociomaterial Practice Perspective," Journal of the
Association for Information Systems (11:5), pp. 276-297.
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,Introduction
Wade (2015)
Digital Business Transformation: organizational change through the use of digital
technologies and business models to improve performance.
Sources of transformation (WHY to transform)
- New technologies and innovations
o Enable new capabilities and points of competitive differentiation
- Customers and consumers
o More informed customers or disintermediated markets
- Competitors and disruptors
o Market and business model fragmentation and disintermediation
o New competition from players often not even from the business to begin with
Digitization piano (WHAT):
Interplay of categories rather than local optima; “playing chords rather than keys”. Making
major changes across different categories of the digitization piano. Particular areas are
digitally transformed in concert, rather than relying on a single approach.
- Business model (how a company makes money)
- Structure (how a company is organized)
- People (who works for a company)
- Processes (how a company does things)
- IT capability (how information is managed)
- Offerings (what products and services a company offers)
- Engagement model (how a company engages with its customers and other
stakeholders)
Digital business agility: Goal: Development of digital capabilities (HOW)
- Hyperawareness (organizational capability to recognize future trends that will impact
the organization: market changes and innovation)
- Informed decision making (the capability to actively analyse information that comes in
through hyperawareness: IT infrastructure and governance processes)
- Fast Execution (quickly execute the necessary changes: fast innovation and high
agility)
Williams and Edge (1996)
Technological determinism
- The nature of technologies and the direction of change are unproblematic or pre-
determined. Technology follows a particular path or logic and thus influences the
social deterministically.
- There is no feedback effect
- Technology has necessary and determinate 'impacts' upon work, upon economic life
and upon society as a whole: technological change thus produces social and
organisational change. Properties and features of technologies influence the social,
but not the other way around.
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, - Technology as an independent, autonomous, and often exogenous variable. Takes
technology for granted (treated it as a given) to assess its social 'impacts'
- Technology has embedded values, believes and perceptions of their designers
BUT: humans have always the possibility to do otherwise social determinism
- The only thing that matters is what we do with the artefact and how we behave as a
result of that. The technology does not come with a deterministic effect or whatsoever.
We shape how we see this. We give meaning to the technology.
- The structural setup of social systems determines the meaning assigned to and use
made of technology
- Social shapes technology so technology becomes indeterminate and lacks any inherent
effect
The social shaping perspective emerged from critique on technological determinism
- Here we think of both the social and the technological to be equal parts in a mutual
adjustment in a process over time where we learn to deal with technology and where
we then adapt to the technology.
- Reciprocal interrelationships between social and technological
- SST studies show that technology does not develop according to an inner
technical logic but is instead a social product, patterned by the conditions of its
creation and use. Every stage in the generation and implementation of new
technologies involves a set of choices between different technical options. Alongside
narrowly 'technical' considerations, a range of 'social' factors affect which options
are selected - thus influencing the content of technologies, and their social
implications.
- Central to SST is the concept that there are 'choices' inherent in both the design of
individual artefacts and systems, and in the direction or trajectory of innovation
programmes. Different routes are available, potentially leading to different
technological outcomes. Significantly, these choices could have differing implications
for society and for particular social groups.
Leonardi (2012)
- Materiality
o The inherent properties of a technology that endure across space/place and
time. They are an intrinsic part of the technology and not part of the social
context in which the technology is used. Such as the artefact’s physical and/or
digital materials.
o Through this materiality, the technology exerts material agency.
- Sociomateriality
o Enactment of a set of activities that meld materiality with institutions,
norms, discourses, and all other phenomena we typically define as “social.”
o Sociomateriality is the higher order (philosophical) concept that describes the
interactions between the social subsystem (abstract institutionalized ideas
about roles, status, hierarchy, power relations, communication networks, etc.)
and the technical subsystem.
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, - Sociomaterial practice
o The sociomaterial practice is about what people are actually doing in the while
bringing together their agency (i.e., their doing in light of their intentions and
goals) with the agency of the artefact they draw upon.
o The space in which multiple human (social) agencies and material
agencies are imbricated (also called a “technical subsystem”).
Practice is the space in which the social and the material become
constitutively entangled.
- Human (social) agency
o The ability of someone to form goals and realize these goals (intentionality).
Social agency = coordinated human agencies.
- Material agency
o The capacity of a technology to act without interventions of people.
o Material agency is activated as humans approach technology with particular
intentions and decide which elements of its materiality to use
- As people approach technological artefacts they form particular goals (human
agency) and they use certain of the artefact’s materiality to accomplish them
(material agency).
Affordances and constraints are constructed in the space between social and material
agencies. Depending on whether they perceive that a technology affords or constrains their
goals, people make choices about how they will imbricate (actualization of
affordance/constraint) social and material agencies.
- Socio-technical system
o Refers to the entire organization of work (abstract institutional constructs and
patterns of sociomaterial imbrication)
o The technology under design will be implemented and used in a social context
that will, to some degree, shape whether and how it is adopted.
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,Orlikowski (2000)
- Social constructivist research examines how interpretations, social interests, and
disciplinary conflicts shape the production of a technology through shaping its cultural
meanings and the social interactions among relevant social groups.
- Technology achieves stabilization through processes of negotiation, persuasion, and
debate.
- Structurational models have posited that technology is developed through a social-
political process which results in structures (rules and resources) being embedded
within the technology.
o The structures are only given meaning through our willingness to act according
to the structures, and only through our actions are the structures given
meaning.
o Human agents build into technology certain interpretive schemes (rules
reflecting knowledge of the work being automated), certain facilities
(resources to accomplish that work), and certain norms (rules that define the
organizationally sanctioned way of executing that work).
o People draw upon the facilities, norms and interpretive schemes in their
enactment.
- Human action (people) enact emergent structures (a set of rules and resources) in
their ongoing situated use (practices) of the technology. People thus shape the
technology structure. But in this enactment, they are shaped by the same enacted
emergent structure, as this (abstract) structure exerts normative pressures on people’s
behaviour that shape how they behave (agency).
o Enacted structures of technology use (technologies-in-practice)
o In their recurrent and situated action, actors thus draw on structures that have
been previously enacted (both technologies-in-practice and other structures),
and in such action reconstitute those structures.
- Link with Leonardi (2012). It is not about the artefact per se. It is about the artefact’s
materiality and the resultant material agency that makes it impact the imbrication part,
the practice.
- Enactment occurs when structures emerge over time due to recurring social practices
- Appropriation occurs when embodied structures remain stable over time and are
invoked according to contextual requirements.
- Two forms of reconstitution of structures: reinforcement, where actors enact
essentially the same structures with no noticeable changes; or transformation, where
actors enact changed structures.
- Institutional, interpretive, and technological conditions shape the ongoing constitution
of different structures, and such constitution in turn reinforces or modifies those
institutional, interpretive, and technological elements.
- The practice lens elaborated here recognizes that even as technologies-in-practice may
become institutionalized over time, this is only a stabilization for now.
- Technology as a structural element in itself (Orlikowski, 2000)
o The material artefact in itself does not matter, only the technology in practice
- Technology stops being an artefact, and becomes a malleable “technology-in-
practice”, whereby users constitute (or reconstitute) emergent technology structures
through their actions.
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,Technology introduction
- So there are three basic phases
o Implementation (adoption) (organizational level)
Identifying the technology
Planning the implementation
Put in change tools etc.
o Adaptation
After Go-Live
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, People and technologies need to adjust to one another
Organizational structures need to account for that adjustment
Lowering performance expectations
o Appropriation
As adaptation efforts are being invested and getting smaller
The amount of appropriation, actually using the technology for
something purposeful and doing that effectively, becomes more and
more over time
o So in an optimal scenario, you will gradually shift from a lot of adaptation and
little appropriation to full appropriation of the technology.
Theme A
Soh & Sia (2005)
- Package-embedded structures: assumptions about organizational requirements in
such areas as organizational policies, structures, standard operating procedures, user
knowledge, and interfaces that are embedded into the processes and features of the ES
package by vendors.
- Imposed package-embedded structures: developers’ reference organizations’
country and industry regulations, practices, or norms.
- Voluntary packaged-embedded structures: developers’ reference organizations’
organization-specific experience, management decisions and preferences.
- Organization structures: organizational structures, practices and norms of the
implementing organization.
- Imposed implementing organization’s structure: implementing organization’s
country and industry regulations, practices and norms.
- Voluntary implementing organization’s structure: implementing organization’s
organization-specific experience, management decisions and preferences.
- When an organization’s voluntary structure is closely tied to how the organization
executes its strategy, management must carefully consider the impact of organizational
adaptation. It might undermine competitive position.
- So the software designers will have structurally conditioned (Volkoff et al. 2007)
their system in a particular way while the organization, too, was structurally
conditioned.
Strong & Volkoff (2010)
- Deficiency misfits are problems arising from ES features that are missing but needed.
o These problems take the form of actions users cannot take because the ES is
missing functionality, data fields, controls, etc., necessary for those actions.
- Imposition misfits are problems arising from the inherent characteristics of an ES
such as integration and standardization.
o Impositions take the form of the ES requiring ways of working that are
contrary to organizational norms and practices or that negatively affect
organizational performance.
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, o The imposition is one from the system onto the organization (much like the
imposition of best practices in Wagner et al.). But this imposition should be
thought of much more in terms of affordances (or, more precisely, constraints)
and their role in scaffolding human action.
- Coverage fit means the ES meets the organization’s requirements (i.e., it includes the
features that the organization needs to operate and that users need to do their work).
o Fit as coverage is a collective construct corresponding to the absence of
deficiency misfits.
- Enablement fit means the ES permits and enables the organization to operate more
effectively, and users to do their work more efficiently, than was the case without an
ES.
o Enablement fit is not merely the absence of imposition misfits, it means that
the organization is better off as a result of implementing the ES, even after
accounting for the negative effects of impositions.
Six categories of misfits:
- Functionality misfits occur when the way processes are executed using the ES leads
to reduced efficiency or effectiveness as compared to pre-ES outcomes.
o Bombardier: functionality imposition misfit: The SAP system automatically
faxed purchase orders to suppliers. SAP had a functionality to automatically
fax purchase orders to suppliers when the MRP engine gets updated. And
because this one was updated every day, the new system created purchase
orders and faxed a lot of them to sourcing agents.
- Data misfits occur when data or data characteristics stored in or needed by the ES
leads to data quality issues such as inaccuracy, inconsistent representations,
inaccessibility, lack of timeliness, or inappropriateness for users’ contexts.
o Bombardier: The BMIS system did not include specific terms that were
necessary for contract negotiation, indicating a data deficiency misfit. This
resulted in inefficient work for Logistics to enter the contracts manually.
- Usability misfits occur when the interactions with the ES required for task execution
are cumbersome or confusing, i.e., requiring extra steps that add no value, or
introduce difficulty in entering or extracting information.
- Role misfits occur when the roles in the ES are inconsistent with the skills available,
create imbalances in the workload leading to bottlenecks and idle time, or generate
mismatches between responsibility and authority.
- Control misfits occur when the controls embedded in the ES provide too much
control, inhibiting productivity, or too little control, leading to the inability to
assess or monitor performance appropriately.
- Organizational culture misfits occur when the ES requires ways of operating that
contravene organizational norms.
Latent structures, Physical structures, Deep structures, Surface structures are technical
representations of an information system and refers to the artefact in Leonardi (2012).
- Surface structure:
o The facilities that are available in the information system to allow users to
interact with the information system.
It exposes the functionality of the system and exposes what lies deeper
in the structure.
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, o When a system’s interface does not support input of or access to information in
the way desired by users usability misfits.
- Deep structure:
o Scripts that provide a representation of real-world systems. It is about the
functionality of the system and the data that is being embedded into the
system.
o Misfits are from missing/inadequate entities and/or business rules
functionality and data misfits
- Physical structure: that what we can touch: e.g. laptop
- Latent structure:
o The latent structures represent the implicit assumptions about roles,
control structures and culture in organizations. The lines of code where this
is embedded are not something that designers have explicitly thought of or that
they have purposefully designed in a particular way. It is something that has
swallowed into general assumptions about roles, control structures, and
culture.
Latent structures (roles, control structures, and organizational culture)
emerge from the way a set of deep, surface, and physical structures are
designed. They are an inevitable and unavoidable outcome of the
scripts for the other structures.
o Comparing with Leonardi (2012). The culture, control, roles etc. are in social
subsystem. But in Strong & Volkoff (2010), these are implemented.
- Material as manifestations of the structural
o When we are programming our Enterprise-Systems, we are putting all of those
structural assumptions into the physical artefact. We are giving the rules
meaning because the tool follows those rules. Relates to latent-structures idea
(Strong & Volkoff, 2010).
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