Christina Soh

Enterprise resource planning: cultural fits and misfits: is ERP a universal solution?

E RP software packages that manage and integrate business processes across organizational functions and locations cost millions of dollars to buy, several times as much to implement, and necessitate disruptive organizational change. While some companies have enjoyed significant gains, others have had to scale back their projects and accept minimal benefits, or even abandon implementation of ERP projects [4]. Historically, a common problem when adopting package software has been the issue of “misfits,” that is, the gaps between the functionality offered by the package and that required by the adopting organization [1, 3]. As a result, organizations have had to choose among adapting to the new functionality, living with the shortfall, instituting workarounds, or customizing the package. ERP software, as a class of package software, also presents this problematic choice to organizations. The problem is exacerbated because ERP implementation is more complex due to cross-module integration, data standardization, adoption of the underlying business model (“best practices”), compressed implementation schedule, and the involvement of a large number of stakeholders. The knowledge gap among implementation personnel is usually significant. Few organizational users underChristina Soh, Sia Siew Kien, and Joanne Tay-Yap

An institutional perspective on sources of ERP package–organisation misalignments

Abstract Organisations often appear to be unaware of fundamental differences that exist between their organisational context and that which is assumed by ERP package developers. This has undermined expected benefits from ERP implementation, and in extreme cases of package-organisational misalignment, has led to project and even organisational failure. In this study, we explain package-organisational misalignments as the result of differences between the structures embedded in the package and those embedded in the organisation. These differences reflect the different institutional context of the package developers and implementing organisation. Some organisational structures are imposed while other structures are voluntarily adopted. The organisation has less control in the case of imposed structures and misalignments associated with imposed structures are therefore more likely to be resolved through package customization. We apply the framework to three hospitals implementing the same ERP package, identify the structural sources of the misalignments, and analyze the relationship to the type of resolution (package customization or organisational adaptation). We found that imposed structures were indeed overwhelmingly resolved through package customization, while most voluntarily acquired structures were resolved via organisational adaptation. We identified the different context specific sources for these structural differences and contribute to the research on ERP implementation, institutional theory, as well as draw implications for practice in managing package–organisation misalignments.

Misalignments in ERP Implementation: A Dialectic Perspective

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are often not fully aligned with the implementing organization. It is important to understand their sources of misalignments because they can have significant implications for the organization. From a dialectic perspective, such misalignments are the result of opposing forces that arise from structures embedded in the ERP package and the organization.

Electronic marketplaces and price transparency: strategy, information technology, and success

Electronic marketplaces (EMPs) are widely assumed to increase price transparency and hence lower product prices. Results of empirical studies have been mixed, with several studies showing that product prices have not decreased and others showing that prices have increased in some cases. One explanation is that sellers prefer not to join EMPs with high price transparency, leading highly price transparent EMPs to fail. Therefore, in order to be successful, EMPs might be expected to avoid high price transparency. But that strategy creates a catch-22 for EMPs on the buy side: Why would buyers want to join EMPs in the absence of price transparency and the benefit of lower prices? We argue that successful EMPs must provide compensatory benefits for sellers in the case of high price transparency and for buyers in the case of low price transparency. To understand how EMPs could succeed, regardless of price transparency, we examined the relationships among EMP strategy, price transparency, and performance by analyzing all 19 EMPs that compete by selling a broad range of standard electronics components. We found that all EMPs pursuing a low cost strategy had high price transparency and performed poorly. All EMPs that performed well pursued strategies of differentiation, but, interestingly, not all successful EMPs avoided price transparency: Some EMPs succeeded despite enabling high price transparency. We therefore examined two differentiated EMPs in greater depth-one with high price transparency, the other with low price transparency-to show how they achieved strategic alignment of activities and resources and provided compensatory benefits for their customers.

An assessment of package–organisation misalignment: institutional and ontological structures

Even with todays ‘best practice’ software, commercial packages continue to pose significant alignment challenges for many organisations. This paper proposes a conceptual framework, based on institutional theory and systems ontology, to assess the misalignments between package functionality and organisational requirements. We suggest that these misalignments can arise from incompatibility in the externally imposed or voluntarily adopted structures embedded in the organisation and package, as well as differences in the way the meaning of organisational reality is ontologically represented in the deep or surface structure of packages. The synthesis of the institutional-ontological dimensions leads us to identify four types of misalignments with varying degrees of severity – imposed-deep, imposed-surface, voluntary-deep, and voluntary-surface – and to predict their likely resolution. We test the predictions using over 400 misalignments from package implementations at three different sites. The findings support the predictions: the majority of imposed-deep misalignments were resolved via package customisation. Imposed-surface and voluntary-deep misalignments were more often resolved via organisational adaptation and voluntary-surface misalignments were almost always resolved via organisational adaptation. The extent of project success also appeared to be influenced by the number of misalignments and the proportion of imposed-deep misalignments. We conclude by suggesting strategies that implementing organisations and package vendors may pursue.

The use of the Internet for business: the experience of early adopters in Singapore

Focuses on business firms in Singapore, identifying the industries in which the Internet is being used for business. These firms are early adopters in the local environment where use of the Internet for business is a new phenomenon still, and they provide information about their Internet experience in terms of their use, perceptions, and the problems encountered. Finds that companies in seven major industries lead in the business use of the Internet in Singapore: computer and information technology; hospitality; manufacturing; travel; retail; publications; and banking and finance. Most of the survey respondents use the Internet for marketing and advertising, customer service and support, information gathering, and, to a lesser degree, electronic transactions. The respondents’ perception of the attributes of the Internet are largely positive. The problems encountered by the respondents include difficulty in locating information, rising costs of Internet use, and security.

Global IT management: structuring for scale, responsiveness, and innovation

To succeed on a global scale, businesses should focus on a trio of key elements.

Structural Influences on Global E-Commerce Activity

An important line of research on global information management examines the effects of national culture on IT development, operations, management and use. This paper argues that global information management researchers should not lose sight of structural conditions related to business-to-business and business-to-consumer e-commerce activity. Structural conditions are physical, social and economic arrangements that shape e-commerce business models and influence individual and organizational use of the Internet. Examples include geography (which affects the physical distribution of goods purchased online), space (which influences the choice of access technology for e-commerce) and financial infrastructure (which is related to credit card use). Structural conditions differ from country to country—and even from location to location within country, but they are not necessarily related to dimensions of natural culture. Therefore, valid explanations of global differences in e-commerce activity require a careful assessment of relevant structural factors.

Standards development and diffusion: a case study of RosettaNet

The RosettaNet consortium aligns its diffusion strategies with its development processes while adapting them to the local conditions in the home countries of its member organizations.

Managing diverse stakeholders in enterprise systems projects: a control portfolio approach

While substantial research has examined the control of information systems (IS) projects, most studies in this area have only examined how one controller manages a single group of controllees. However, many IS projects, especially enterprise systems projects (often initiated by an organizations corporate headquarters, and involving business unit users and consultants), have multiple stakeholders. The corporate headquarters (the projects principal controller) must simultaneously ensure that the various stakeholders are aligned with the projects goals despite their diverse motivations, and that the stakeholders collaborate with each other to achieve project success. Behavior control theory argues that the controller enacts a control portfolio of formal and informal controls. However, the presence of multiple controllee groups increases the complexity of vertical controller–controllee relationships, the salience of controllee–controllee relationships, and the interaction between these vertical and horizontal relationships. We therefore examined the creation and evolution of the control portfolio in a multi-stakeholder project over a period of 14 months. We found that (1) the principal controller did enact separate controls for the user and consultant groups; (2) there was more than one controller – the principal controller co-existed with subordinate controllers; and (3) controls enacted by the subordinate controllers and other controllees that cut across stakeholder groups required the support of the principal controller.