Christopher J. Hemingway

Workforce agility: the new employee strategy for the knowledge economy

The notion of the agile workforce has been discussed as central to creating the agile organization, which achieves superior environmental responsiveness in contexts of turbulence and change. Previous agility research has focused overly on the organization, paying scant attention to the workforce. This paper addresses a significant gap in agility research by reporting on the first empirical study to examine how the pressures of organizational agility impact upon the workforce. Survey evidence from 515 UK organizations is used for eliciting an initial indicator of workforce agility. The data suggest that agile workforces acquire the five capabilities of intelligence, competencies, collaboration, culture and information systems (IS). From an information technology (IT) perspective the determinants of workforce agility are flexible infrastructure platforms that support the rapid introduction of new IS and the enhancement of IT competencies across the entire workforce. The survey also revealed that information and communications technology applications increase workforce agility most when used for collaborative working.

A Framework for addressing the organisational issues of enterprise systems implementation

Abstract Over the last 10 years many organisations have made significant investments in Enterprise-wide Systems (ES), particularly Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software packages. Whilst in most cases technical implementation is relatively successful, many of the initiatives have failed to deliver the benefits expected. Research studies have identified a wide range of factors, that can affect the success of ES implementations, and the general consensus is that organisational issues are more difficult to resolve than technical ones. This research set out to synthesise a framework, from prior research, for analysing and understanding these organisational issues and to apply and refine the framework by studying four ES initiatives in different organisational and industry contexts. The findings from the case studies suggest that the framework can help understand how different approaches to managing ES implementations both address and influence the behaviours of key interest groups and hence the achievement of the benefits expected from the investment.

Incorporating Social Transformation into the Information Systems and Software Development Lifecycles

All approaches to information systems and software development assume lifecycle models, which have a significant impact upon the perspective adopted for design and development. In recognition of the limitations of conventional software engineering lifecycles, the Information Systems (IS) community has focused upon gaining recognition of organizational and human issues in systems design. The Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) community has also tried to introduce user-centered practices into software engineering, but its success has been limited because it has augmented existing lifecycle models that are document or risk-driven. Yet, user-centered design can only be fully realized through the adoption of a user-centered model of the information systems lifecycle as the basis for developing ICT-based systems. This paper explains how several of the limitations of current IS and HCI theory and practice can be overcome by modeling development lifecycles in terms of social transformation. The paper then presents an information systems development lifecycle based upon social transformation and illustrates how a user-centered software development lifecycle can be integrated into the IS development process.

Challenges for Participatory Action Research in Industry-Funded Information Systems Projects

The purpose of this position paper is to open a discussion about the practicability of participatory action research (PAR) within industry-funded information systems (IS)research. We reflect on a project in which the undue exercise of power by the practitioners on the research team compromised the methodological rigor of the inquiry. Theories of power are used to articulate our reflections and develop suggestions for mitigating power imbalances on PAR research teams, although we conclude that PAR cannot be followed faithfully to its principles in industry-funded engagements.