Pernille Kræmmergaard

Identifying the impacts of enterprise system implementation and use: Examples from Denmark

This paper reports the results of an explorative study of six large Danish companies regarding the effects of ERP implementation and use. The study is part of a larger ERP study programme at the Aarhus School of Business. The data collection approach applied was based on interviews and management case writing. The main results show that the effects of ERP implementation and use are seldom fully predictable by management. The ERP system can be seen as an organisational actor in its own right as it to a large extent influences values, culture, behaviour, processes and procedures of other actors in the organisation. Given the complexity, size and organisational embeddedness of ERP systems, it can be said that the implementation project never ends and the ERP system becomes a significant variable in the future direction of the organisation

A comprehensive literature review of the ERP research field over a decade

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is first, to develop a methodological framework for conducting a comprehensive literature review on an empirical phenomenon based on a vast amount of papers published. Second, to use this framework to gain an understanding of the current state of the enterprise resource planning (ERP) research field, and third, based on the literature review, to develop a conceptual framework identifying areas of concern with regard to ERP systems.Design/methodology/approach – Abstracts from 885 peer‐reviewed journal publications from 2000 to 2009 have been analysed according to journal, authors and year of publication, and further categorised into research discipline, research topic and methods used, using the structured methodological framework.Findings – The body of academic knowledge about ERP systems has reached a certain maturity and several different research disciplines have contributed to the field from different points of view using different methods, showing that the ERP rese...

Managerial Competences for ERP Journeys

This paper investigates the managerial competences required for the complex interactions required to successfully integrate an Enterprise Resource Planning system into an organization—the ERP journey. A feature of the study (a five year longitudinal study of a Danish production company implementing SAP R/3) was the rise and fall of the ERP project managers. The study showed that different stages of the ERP journey required different competences from the managers. A manager with a certain competence mix might successfully oversee part of the ERP journey, but a different blend of competences was required to manage other parts. The paper concludes that a wide range of competences are required: personal, business and technical. The competence mix should be expected to vary through the journey, and is often too much to expect of one person.

ERP systems and technological discourse shift: Managing the implementation journey

In an implementation of an ERP system in a large Danish production company (here referred to as Omega), discourse surrounding the project changed appreciably during the course of the project. Drawing on recent adaptations of discourse theory, we provide a theoretical model which relates technological discourse to actions and outcomes. The model provides a theoretical explanation for how one dominant technological discourse in an organisation could be replaced by another. The ERP implementation at Omega was originally cast as a classical IT project (reflecting the dominant ways of thinking about the project and project management both in industry and academia); however, the experience of the project changed the sense-making of the participants and the implementation later came to be regarded as a technology-driven organisational change initiative. The new technological discourse helped the organisational actors to perceive value in what they were doing. The research form is a interpretive case study, which has different philosophical roots, methods and modes of presentation than the functionalist tradition dominant in AIS research. Both the research mode and the research conclusions challenge current AIS thinking concerning the implementation of a large information system. The implications for research and practice are discussed in the final sections of the paper.

Managing stakeholders in transformational government: A case study in a Danish local government

Abstract According to the e-government maturity literature public organizations will move through different stages of maturity implying that more mature e-government is better. For many public organizations the next stage to enter is the stage of transformational government (Dhillon et al., 2008). This paper contributes to this literature by reporting the findings from a case study in a Danish local government who has reached the stage of transformational government. Using a grounded theory approach, information about the local government was initially collected and further analyzed within a stakeholder perspective. The paper reports how they succeeded in involving the most important stakeholders in the process of reaching transformational government. Finally the paper offers six lessons learned, based on the case study, about how to manage the involved stakeholders to reach transformational government.

Managing Cultural Variation in Software Process Improvement: A Comparison of Methods for Subculture Assessment

The scale and complexity of change in software process improvement (SPI) are considerable and managerial attention to organizational culture during SPI can therefore potentially contribute to successful outcomes. However, we know little about the impact of variations in organizational subculture on SPI initiatives. On this backdrop, we present an exploratory study of a large-scale SPI project in a Danish high-technology company, Terma. Two of its business units-integrated systems (ISY) and airborne systems (ASY)-followed similar approaches over a three-year period, but with quite different outcomes. While ISY reached capability maturity model integration (CMMI) level 2 as planned, ASY struggled to implement even modest improvements. To help explain these differences, we analyzed the underlying organizational culture within ISY and ASY using two different methods for subculture assessment. The study demonstrates how variations in culture across software organizations can have important implications for SPI outcomes. Furthermore, it provides insights into how software managers can practically assess subcultures to inform decisions about and help prepare plans for SPI initiatives.

Itil Implementation: Critical Success Factors A Comparative Case Study Using The Bpc Framework

Abstract This article examines critical success factors for the implementation of an IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL)1. It uses a case study methodology grounded in Business Process Change (BPC) theory to compare a successful ITIL implementation with an unsuccessful one. Data was collected by conducting interviews at various levels in two organizations. The study identifies several critical success factors related to ITIL implementation and compares these factors with factors identified by previous research in order to highlight areas that need specific attention when implementing ITIL.

Dominant Technological Discourses in Action: Paradigmatic Shifts in Sense Making in the Implementation of an ERP System

In an implementation of an ERP system in a large Danish production company, the ways in which the participants made sense of the project changed appreciably during the course of the project. At the start of the project, the predominant mode of thinking was classical, with many actors thinking of the implementation as a standard IT project. Later in the project, this way of thinking had changed: the majority viewed the implementation as an organizational change program. Clearly the experience of the project had changed the sense making of the participants to some extent. We used three theoretical frameworks to investigate and explain this change. Technological frames (Orlikowski and Gash 1994) helped us distinguish the different styles of sense making, but bound particular social groups to particular frames in a way that was not consistent with the empirical situation. Alvesson and Willmott’s (1996) levels of discourse provided a richer picture of inter-linking and evolving styles of sense making, and of actors’ fluency in moving between one and another, but provided no explanation of how or why one discourse should take over from another. In order to explain this change, it was necessary to add actions and outcomes to the picture, and for this a later theoretical contribution of Orlikowski (2000) was useful. In the practice lens, Orlikowski extends her work on structuration theory and technology. Here sense making (structure) and action are dependent upon each other in an emergent process. Since none of these theoretical perspectives offered a convincing explanation of the change in sense making at Omega, it was necessary to construct a new theoretical model in the light of our analysis. Now it was possible to understand how actions (taken in the light of the dominant technological discourse about the ERP implementation) produced outcomes perceived as unfavorable, and how an alternative discourse providing more tolerable and convenient sense making took over.

Transforming local government by project portfolio management: Identifying and overcoming control problems

Purpose – As public organizations strive for higher e‐government maturity, information technology (IT) Project Portfolio Management (IT PPM) has become a high priority issue. Assuming control is central in IT PPM, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how a Danish local government conducts control in IT PPM. The authors identify control problems and formulate recommendations to address these.Design/methodology/approach – Adopting principles from Engaged Scholarship, the authors have conducted a case study using a wide variety of data collection methods, including 29 interviews, one workshop, and analyses of documents.Findings – It is found that the local government relies vastly on informal control mechanisms and five control problems are identified: weak accountability processes between the political and administrative level; weak accountability between the director level and the IT executives; IT projects established on the basis of incomplete information about internal resources; lack of operatio...

The emergence of enterprise systems management: a challenge to the IS curriculum

This paper proposes four cornerstones of a future Information Systems (IS) curriculum. It analyses the challenges of the IS curriculum based on the development of enterprise systems, and further argues that the practice and the research into enterprise systems have progressed to a new stage resulting in the emergence of Enterprise Systems Management (ESM). ESM calls for new competences and consequently represents new challenges to the IS curriculum. The paper outlines potential teaching issues and discusses the impact on the IS curriculum. Finally the paper suggests ways of approaching the challenges.