Tero Päivärinta

Enterprise Content Management: An Integrated Perspective on Information Management

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is an emerging concept involving numerous software vendors, consultants, and information management practitioners around increasing market potential. However, there exist yet few academic reports on ECM from the viewpoint of organizational system implementations. This article analyses 58, mainly practitioner-oriented, case narratives of ECM projects and implementations to identify a framework of major issues that require managerial attention in organizations. The main areas covered by the framework are: objectives/impacts sought with ECM, enterprise model to be supported by ECM, content model, technological infrastructure, administrative resources and practices, and change management issues. The issues identified in this framework serve information management practitioners to facilitate ECM development from the viewpoint of the enterprise. Comparing the concept of ECM with related research on information resource management, electronic document management, and knowledge management, we argue that ECM represents a modern, integrated perspective on information management.

Characterizing the evolving research on enterprise content management

Innovations in network technologies in the 1990s have provided new ways to store and organize information to be shared by people and various information systems. The term Enterprise Content Management (ECM) has been widely adopted by software product vendors and practitioners to refer to technologies used to manage the content of assets like documents, web sites, intranets, and extranets In organizational or inter-organizational contexts. Despite this practical interest ECM has received only little attention in the information systems research community. This editorial argues that ECM provides an important and complex subfield of Information Systems. It provides a framework to stimulate and guide future research, and outlines research issues specific to the field of ECM.

Implementing enterprise content management: from evolution through strategy to contradictions out-of-the-box

This study examines a strategic development and implementation process of enterprise content management (ECM) in a large oil company. In view of the framework of four motors of development and change in organizations, this study represents a revelatory case of a hybrid development approach to ECM that involves the teleological, life-cycle, and dialectical motors of development. This is in contrast to the evolutionary development motor, which has prevailed in the hitherto reported content management research. The case study also complements process-based research on enterprise system implementations in general. We suggest that research and practice on large-scale ECM implementations should acknowledge all the four motors of change.

Models of E-Democracy

Pulished article in Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 17 (1), 818-840. Also available from the publisher: http://aisel.aisnet.org/cais/vol17/iss1/37/

Customization of enterprise content management systems: an exploratory case study

Enterprise content management (ECM) systems are mostly implemented in organizations by acquiring commercial software packages and customizing them to meet the organizational requirements. The customization aspect of ECM systems lacks empirical research. This paper explores the concepts of ECM customization and issues identified with ECM customization. The data are based on an in-depth case study from the oil industry and complemented with a secondary analysis of 60 vendor-reported cases of ECM implementations. The results show considerable customization challenges related to ECM, especially concerning integration, usability and functional adaptation. A resulting framework of customization concepts in ECM is suggested and discussed, along with issues for further research.

Autopoietic Cybergenres for e-Democracy? Genre Analysis of a Web-Based Discussion Board

The paper discusses genre theory in the field of e-Democracy. A framework for analysing communicative genres related to four stereotypical e-Democracy models is suggested. A case study of a web based discussion board in a municipality illustrates the implications of applying the genre lens to the e-Democracy research and practice, with lessons learned to considered in the future efforts on e-Democracy. Based on observations from the case, a theoretical concept of autopoietic cybergenre is suggested and its potential significance for future e-Democracy initiatives is addressed. An autopoietic cybergenre, such as a web-based discussion board, includes inherent capability for meta-communication enabling continuous structuring of the purpose(s) and parts of the form of the genre in question itself.

A genre-based method for information systems planning

INTRODUCTION Currently, corporations implement diversified computer-based information systems (IS). These include organization-scale solutions such as enterprise resource planning systems, inter-, extra-, and intranet applications, product data management, and enterprise document management systems. At the same time, the end user is ever more capable of rapidly developing and tailoring small-scale applications for groups, organizational units, and personal purposes independently (Grover, Teng, and Fiedler, 1998). Furthermore, corporations are investing in information technology infrastructures that take full advantage of global networking and business process re-engineering (Broadbent and Weill, 1997; Grover et al. 1998). The emerging types of systems are becoming necessities in many smaller companies too. For example, a successful subcontracting network may require certain systems to be used by all the partners. (Song and Nagi, 1997; Toh, Newman and Bell, 1998). Evidently, the above trends call for a holistic but dynamic organizational perspective on information systems planning1 (ISP) (Huysman, Fischer and Heng, 1994; Grover et al., 1998; Spil & Salmela, 1999). We define ISP as a dynamic process where IS development and use are planned to better assist an organization in serving its purposes. This definition is in line with many authors’ definitions on strategic ISP (Lederer and Sethi, 1988; Fitzgerald, 1993; Spil and Salmela, 1999). It does not explicitly mention the concept of competitive/strategic advantage2 . By such a scope we like to extend the area of ISP to be more suitable for different organizations with different purposes and to remind

Introduction to the enterprise content management minitrack

Enterprise content management (ECM) focuses on the management of textual and multimedia content across and between enterprises, emphasizing the coexistence of technical and social aspects within the content management. Methods and techniques applicable for managing textual and multimedia information with all sizes of content units, ranging from XML and database structures through web pages and documents to document collections, are studied as well as approaches focusing on specific content structures. In a piece of ECM research, multiple of the perspectives may be covered, or one of the perspectives is chosen as the major view to the area: • the technical perspective including the development of new kinds of hardware and software solutions and related standards for the management of content, or • the user perspective including requirements analysis, evaluation of existing or proposed solutions from the point of view of the users, and methods for personalization, or • the process perspective including the analysis and development of solutions to support business processes or work processes (choosing e.g. the approach of CSCW, eBusiness, or ERP), and analysis of the interaction of processes with the content elements, or • the content perspective, including issues on granularity of content, combination of content elements, modelling issues related to the content, and content on a special application area. The topics of ECM research can include: • content management in work processes • document and text databases • content personalization, internationalization, localization

From ideals towards practice: paradigmatic mismatches and drifts in method deployment

There is considerable debate in the information systems literature on how systems development methods (SDMs) are used in practice. On one side are those who take the position that these methods are not used at all. The other side posits that SDMs are used but not in the manner intended by the method developers. In practice, SDMs are adapted and modified to meet project exigencies, which results in unique methods‐in‐use in each project. We subscribe to the latter view and extend the argument by proposing that SDM modifications happen due to mismatches between the paradigmatic values inherent in the SDM, the method users and the organizational context. Further, planned modifications themselves result in shifts of paradigmatic values inherent in the SDM. To examine our contention, we conduct a case study in which we trace an SDM from its development to its deployment and use in an organization. We show where the mismatches occurred and provide explanations for the mismatches. Our results indicate that paradigm differences explain most of the mismatches, and different factors contribute to the paradigm drifts simultaneously, even towards diverging orientations. We conclude that the true value of an SDM, in addition to its tool and technique use, is a basis for examining and self‐reflecting about paradigmatic values. This is an essential part of learning to develop systems.

Pre-determinants of Implementing IT Benefits Management in Norwegian Municipalities: Cultivate the Context

The concept of benefits management addresses explicated practices to realize benefits from information technology investments. However, a minority of organizations have implemented those. We explored which pre-determinants affect the implementation of benefits management practices by conducting a Delphi process in the Norwegian municipality sector. The experts represented governmental organs, general management, and municipal service managers. They identified 59 pre-determinants of potential importance. However, the experts reached no significant consensus on the relative importance of the pre-determinants. Instead, we suggest that the identified pre-determinants should be holistically and contextually scrutinized. As a basis for that, we categorized the pre-determinants further into the areas of government-level policy, municipality-level policy, benefits management process, and benefits management toolbox of methods and techniques. Our study highlights areas of explicated managerial policies and actions in the municipal and inter-municipal contexts, in addition to the task of finding out a set of useful practices as such.