Peter van Baalen

Implementing packaged enterprise software in multi-site firms: intensification of organizing and learning

Packaged enterprise software, in contrast with custom-built software, is a ready-made mass product aimed at generic customer groups in a variety of industries and geographical areas. The implementation of packaged software usually leads to a phase of appropriation and customization. As the associated processes remain ill understood, particularly for multi-site implementations, the objective of this paper is to understand the impact of packaged software in a multi-site organization. Adopting a case study method, this paper reports on a multi-site project that was analyzed at the group, site, and corporate level. Our findings suggest that as organizational units face the unsettling experience of having to implement a single source code across globally distributed sites, packaged software intensifies organizing and learning processes across these levels. The paper identifies specific processes for these levels and concludes with implications for research and practice. Our research extends IS research on packaged software implementation with an emphasis on multi-site firms.

Port Inter-Organizational Information Systems: Capabilities to Service Global Supply Chains

This paper provides insights into the ways global sea ports are challenged by the need for managing complex information flows, given the developments in global supply chains. We argue that special port IT capabilities are needed to address these challenges by sharing information and planning and executing container transport in a collaborative way, establishing inter-organizational information architectures, and coordinating interests to successfully implement the technological infrastructures. We focus on the role of port community systems that support port communities in meeting the demands of global supply chains.

The Implications of Different Models of Social Relations for Understanding Knowledge Sharing

It is generally agreed upon that knowledge sharing is a crucial process within organizational settings, whether these are, for example, project teams, formal work groups or communities of practice. One might even argue that sharing knowledge is the raison d’etre of such organizational settings. After all, due to the division of labour and accompanying fragmentation, specialization and distribution of knowledge, it becomes essential to integrate and thus share the diversity of complementary knowledge in order to produce complex products and services (Grant, 1996).

The evolution of management as an interdisciplinary field

Purpose – This paper aims to provide insights into the evolution of the concept of interdisciplinarity in management science and management education.Design/methodology/approach – A range of recently published (1993‐2002) works, which aim to provide practical advice rather than theoretical books on pedagogy or educational administration, are critiqued to aid the individual make the transition into academia. The sources are sorted into sections: finding an academic job, general advice, teaching, research and publishing, tenure and organizations.Findings – The paper finds that in the evolution of management education and management science interdisciplinarity took different forms: synoptic and instrumental. Both forms resulted from different knowledge strategies of competing and cooperating disciplines. It concludes that in The Netherlands instrumental versions of interdisciplinarity in management research and education prevailed.Research limitations/implications – The paper studies the evolution of interdi...

Contested practice: Multiple inclusion in double-knit organizations

Purpose – Most people participate in various groups and communities simultaneously. Many authors have pointed to the importance of multi‐membership for knowledge sharing across communities and teams. The most important expected benefit is that knowledge that has been acquired in one community of practice (CoP) can be applied into another CoP or group. This paper seeks to discuss the consequences of multi‐membership for knowledge sharing in a CoP.Design/methodology/approach – The concept of multiple inclusion is used to explain why and how multi‐membership can hold up knowledge sharing between groups.Findings – This case study shows that knowledge transfer between CoPs and teams can be problematic when norm sets between these two groups conflict.Originality/value – This paper concludes that CoPs can sustain when the “practice” remains at a safe distance from the “real” project work in teams that are guided by managerial objectives.

The radicalization of the multiversity: the case of the networked business school

Transformations in the context of higher education urge educational institutions to (re)position and (re)organize themselves to counter the challenges these transformations bring. Especially regarding universities and business schools, organizations that encompass a broad range of communities, operations, and activities, these transformations result in the radicalization of what Kerr has called the multiversity. The rationale of this radicalization is to be found in the trends and developments in the contemporary context of higher education. This article presents the networked business school as a response to this radicalization within the field of management education and management learning, since network organization seems to offer a lot of possibilities and benefits to the organization of business schools.

Instantiating global crisis networks: The case of SARS

Abstract In this paper we build a multi-theoretical and multi-level framework for analyzing Global Crisis Networks (GCN). These information-centric, heterarchically structured networks are instantiated in response to major disasters with global impact. The instantiation of GCN is conceived as a problem of collective action. Its success depends on multi-level preparedness, and network orchestration and participation. With this framework we analyze the SARS outbreak in 2002 and its successful containment in 2003. We analyze two individual country cases, Canada and China and discuss the role of the network orchestrator, the World Health Organizations. The paper concludes with implications for research and practice.

The social shaping of the early business schools in The Netherlands: Professions and the power of abstraction

– This paper aims to provide an alternative explanation for the rise of modern management schools at the turn of the twentieth century. It is to be argued that these schools were not just responses of the higher education system to the demand of industrializing companies for a new class of professional managers, like Chandler suggests., – The historical‐actor approach is applied to explain the rise of academic management schools, prior to the Second World War. Data were collected from the archives of different management schools and professional organizations of the engineers and accountants., – To legitimize their position in the higher education system, abstraction appeared to be the dominant strategy of the professions. By abstraction they could distinguish themselves from the lay public and other professional groups in the domain of management. At the moment the new professions had a foot in the higher education system the engineers and the accountants contested for the new management domain. Abstraction appeared also the successful strategy of the accountants to distinguish themselves from the engineers and to establish a sound base for the development of the Dutch variant of business economics., – The paper presents a full account of the Dutch situation but the findings cannot be generalized to other countries. More comparative research is needed. The rise of management schools is mostly explained as an educational response to an economic demand., – The history of the Dutch business schools may provide researchers and administrators of universities insight into the dynamics of disciplines and into setting up professional schools., – This research is based on original documents from the archives of schools and professional organizations. The main contribution of the paper is that it shows how emancipatory and social status motives mediated between the demand and supply side.

Europeanisation and Americanisation: Converging Backgrounds of German and Dutch Top Managers, 1990–2005

The extensive academic debate on the rise of the European Firm reveals a recurring paradox. Most scholars agree that the image of diversity is the most distinctive characteristic of the European Firm. However the concept of diversity is, by definition, hard to define and tends to elude attempts to distinguish common characteristics of European companies.1 To provide empirical evidence for the existence or the rise of the European Firm thus poses the paradoxical question for researchers of whether common or diverging characteristics across European companies should be investigated. We adopt a comparative approach and investigate if and how executive boards of leading German and Dutch companies converged with respect to the nationality and educational backgrounds of their members in the period 1990–2005. In this period, globalisation and internationalisation, in particular by virtue of the liberalisation of the European market, are expected to have influenced firms fundamentally. We believe a study of possible “convergence within European boundaries” from the perspective of the executive boards provides new insights and contributes to the debate on the rise of the European Firm.

Training and development in the Dutch context: an overture to the knowledge society?

Recent debate in The Netherlands has raised the question of whether the Dutch economy can meet the requirements of the emerging knowledge society. One of the main requirements will be the establishment of a symbiotic relationship between business systems and the education system. By analysing trends and developments in formal vocational education and corporate training and development over the last two decades we observe some major changes in the formal education system and in corporate training and development. In the formal education system a major transformation has taken place towards an alignment with the business system. In the corporate system we see a rapid growth and expansion in training and development. However, when we look to these developments in greater detail we observe striking differences in growth between sectors, sex, age, prior education and ethnicity. For this reason we conclude that the main challenge for the emerging Dutch knowledge society is to prevent people from being excluded from the expansion in training and development.