The organizational implementation of information systems

List of contents

1 Introduction

2 Theoretical approach

3 Methodology

4 Analysis
4.1 Organizational Task Areas
4.2 Identifying concrete tasks for the task areas

5 Systematization on organizational layers

6 Conclusion

Literature analysis on organizational tasks during the implementation of information systems

Abstract

Many companies want to implement an information system to their enterprise to reorganize and improve their business processes. To accomplish the implementation there have a lot of tasks to be done. Past researches concentrates on the selection of the correct system as well as the technical aspects. But just as important are the organizational tasks. There are only a few researches about the organizational tasks and they were made before the development of things like Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 and social information systems. In this regard, this literature review will identify the organizational tasks to implement an information system and systemize these tasks on the different organizational layers.

Thus the companies that plan the Implementation of an information system will know, what organizational tasks have to be done and which organizational layer is responsible for these. This will help to avoid organizational problems that could lead to delay, higher costs or even failure.

Keywords: organizational implementation, information system, application system, user resistance, organizational change.

1 Introduction

The focus of many companies is the reorganization of their business processes. The new strategy should make the company more flexible, adaptive, powerful and process oriented. This is where the limits of manual methods are reached fast. Therefore more and more companies are integrating information systems (IS) to support and speed up this process as well as enhance the probability of success. Also with the advancement of services and products the application and the successful integration of these systems are increasing as the center of attention.

„Bei einem Informationssystem (IS) handelt es sich um ein sozio-technisches System, welches menschliche und maschinelle Komponenten (Teilsysteme) umfasst und welches zum Ziel der Bereitstellung von Information und Kommunikation eingesetzt wird.“ (Dietze, 2004, p. 78-79). There are many different types of IS, however only administration, disposition and planning systems are differentiated frequently (Dietze, 2004, p. 79).

In this process the company has to solve a lot of challenges. These challenges can be categorized in organizational-structural barriers, personnel-cultural barriers and content wise-conceptual barriers (Odermatt, 2009, p. 66). This arrangement has its origin in enterprise communication, but can also be applied to information systems, because this software is used for enterprise-wide vote and communication. This shows also the global area which such a system has to cover in the enterprise. Moreover technical problems and budget exceeding can occur. Therefore there is another option to categorize the concepts. This categorization according to Koch (2008) in technique-centered introduction concepts, user or acceptance-centered introduction concepts and organization-centered introduction concepts (Koch, 2008, p. 32) will not be the subject of this work, because there the close connection to enterprise communication is not reflected there.

According to the „Chaos Report“, a study of the Standish Group, which is examined every year and in which the success and failure factors of IT-projects, as well as proportional success is reflected, shows that 2015 only 29% of all IT-projects could be implemented successfully (Hastie & Wojewoda, 2015). The critical success factors were thereby above all, the support by the managing directors in financial support and social support, the authority of the coworkers and their motivation to co-operation, as well as including the coworkers in project decisions and information promotion. Particularly important for success were further the optimization of the business processes and the adherence to the planned range of the modifications and adjustments.

The introduction information system becomes thereby a high-complex and lengthy process, for which no generally accepted concept can be described. For this reason new introduction concepts are investigated again and again and are summarized and systematized also in literature analyses. However since information systems constantly develop themselves further, new implementation barriers must be identified and introduction concepts be found. This work is to dedicate itself to the current state of research and describe the newest introduction concepts. The emphasis is on organizational-structural modification processes, because otherwise the range of this work could not be kept. A master thesis will later give an overview of concepts within the wider areas to the introduction of IS.

„The organizational factors describe the characteristics of an organization and include technology policy, top management support, and management risk position.“ (Lee & Kim, 2007, p. 1858). The associated integration functions are to be uncovered and code features of a successful integration by IS to be stated.

From this the following research questions result:

- Which organizational tasks can be identified?
- Which organizational layer can these tasks be systematized on?

In order to come to the theoretical approach, the necessary information is stated in the following part of the work. Afterwards the methodology of the work is explained. Further organizational task areas for the introduction of IS are identified. In the section following on that the tasks for these areas are described and then systematized on enterprise level. Finally an overview of current research gaps is given.

2 Theoretical approach

To be able to deal with the increasing complexity of the decision-making processes and information flooding exerted by it (vlg. Grund, Grund, & Rothlauf, 2005, p. 1), more and more companies implement information systems to their innovation processes. These information systems should compress „ausgewählte Informationen [...] in Kennzahlen […] um noch besser und schneller Entscheidungsträger unterstützen zu können“ (Grund et al., 2005, p. 1). „Darüber hinaus gibt es einen ansteigenden Wissens- und Informationstransfer, wodurch die Produkt- bzw. Technologielebenszyklen immer kürzer werden.“ (Atmaca, 2013, p. 10).

It is to be noted that in the literature the terms information technology, information system and information management are not used uniformly (Dietze, 2004, p. 75). The author of this work uses the most quoted definition of Wittmann for the definition of information: „Information ist ein zweckorientiertes Wissen, also solches Wissen, das zur Erreichung eines Zweckes, nämlich einer möglichst vollkommenen Disposition eingesetzt wird.“ (Wittmann, 1959, p. 14). Since the information system was determined beforehand as a sozio-technical system, the term of the information technology must be defined too: „Die Informationstechnologie (IT) bildet die Basis für Informationssysteme. Entsprechend ihrer Neuartigkeit und ihres Verbreitungsgrades wird sie als Basis-, Schlüssel-, Schrittmacher- oder Zukunftstechnologie bezeichnet“ (Dietze, 2004, p. 78). The information system therefore includes the whole information-processing and information-storing subsystem of the enterprise (Ammenwerth, ..., Bess, & Haux, 2005, p. 1). And this subsystem is acting on different organizational layers.

During the implementation process of IS many difficulties and barriers can occur. Particularly within the organizational area the right communication structure has to be created by the enterprises. If the enterprise fails in the organizational IS-introduction, the coworkers see the risk that the roles in the enterprise are redefined in combination with a loss and shifts of power (Perl, 2006, p. 91). The alternative problem is that the intended changes of the organization will not happen (Brenner, 1994, p. 210). “Dem Entgegenzuwirken ist Aufgabe der obersten Geschäftsführung, die mittels dezidierter Vorgaben, Adressierung und Aufteilung der Arbeitsaufgaben und Verantwortlichkeiten geeignete Strukturen für ein zwischenbetriebliches Informationssystem schaffen muss.“ (Perl, 2006, p. 92). This shows: „Die Einführung eines neuen Informationssystems ist ein Prozess der Organisationsentwicklung.“ (Brenner, 1994, p. 210).

Therefore many literature contributions and introduction concepts were written and prepared in the last years. But „eine Metatheorie hinsichtlich der organisatorischen Implementierung von Informationssystemen in Unternehmen [...] (ist) nicht zu finden, auch wenn die Implementierungsforschung bereits eine Vielzahl geeigneter Bausteine hierfür liefert.“ (Engstler, 2009, p. XXV). This is because of the fact that the organization functions, which result in the case of the introduction of an IS often are underestimated. Additionally IS are constantly being developed further and getting more complex. Considering these facts, the current research within the area of the organizational implementation of IS has to be identified and systemized in this work

3 Methodology

IS have changed during the last years because of new developments like “Web 2.0”, social aspects in software and outsourcing of IT. New scientific perceptions on the integration of IS in companies have been attained by organizational research. Therefore a summary of the new findings related to the integration of IS, that have been attained during the last years, since “Web 2.0” was named ten years ago, is necessary. Within this work, the organizational tasks that are essential in the course of a successful implementation of an IS are to be identified by a methodic literature analysis according to Webster and Watson (2002). The review will be representative and for practitioners with the focus on application and the goal of integration.

At first the relevant literature that is to be analyzed is identified. Therefore journals and books are focus of this review. For the evaluation of the found literature there will be a closer look at the organizational tasks of different methodologies. After that, an organizational layer system for these perceptions will be created and the findings will be ranged into this system. Finally an outline of research limitations and an outlook on further research areas shall be pointed out.

To be able to select the relevant literature, in chapter one initially two research questions have been expressed. These questions state that this paper focuses on new perceptions of recent years. Most summaries of implementation concepts took place before 2006. But after 2006 many substantial developments named before were made. Thus the search for works will be limited to the period of 2006 to 2016. Both German and English scientific journals and books are to be examined as German is the language of the author and there are differences in the meaning of information system in the language areas. This can lead to different insights. Common scientific databases for economical and informational literature (EconBIZ, Google Scholar, TEMA, Science Direct, Web of Science, Academic Search Complete) have been searched through.

The following catchwords have been used for the research:

“ organisatorische AND Einführung* AND Informationssystem*” (String 1), “(Implement* or Einführung) AND (informationssystem or information system or is) AND organi*” (String 2), “title:organi* AND title:implemen* AND title:(information system or is or informationssystem)” (String 3), “organizational AND change” (String 4).

The number of findings within the certain databases is listed in table 1.

Table 1. Results from the databases

Abbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthalten

After setting the date of publication to after 2006 and later and reading the abstracts of the results from the first three pages of each search, sorted by relevance, the number of relevant works reduced to 15. The residual ones have been checked there are no doublets and have been conducted to the content wise.

4 Analysis

„Die organisatorische Implementierung von Informationssystemen kann als Beispiel für die fließenden Übergänge von Change Management und Implementierung verstanden werden, die es im Rahmen des Veränderungsmanagements zu gestalten gilt.“ (Engstler, 2009, p. 26). Thus the success of the implementation of the information system directly depends on the organizational functions. These organizational functions must be completed on different organizational levels of the enterprise. In the following the scheduler tasks are identified first and then systematized on the organizational levels of the enterprise.

4.1 Organizational Task Areas

To identify concrete tasks to implement an IS the task areas have to be described first.

Following Engstler the implementation of the information system covers he phases of the development, introduction, evolution and evaluation (Engstler, 2009, p. 261). The organizational functions are thereby particularly in the phases of the development and introduction. The phases of the evolution and evaluation are only accompanied by organization planning. To do so, the basic conditions for organizational development processes have to be established (Engstler, 2009, p. 262).

The organizational introduction process of the IS according to Koch et al. divides into four areas. These are the in introduction strategy and support by the management, the introduction process and view levels, the information of the users by training courses and guidelines and the information about use and documentation (M. Koch, Richter, & Thönnißen-Fries, 2012, p. 162).

Dern sees the emphasis during introduction of the Implemantation in the integration architecture pyramid, their adjustment to the enterprise viable and the associated organizational imbedding (Dern, 2006, p. 111). The architecture pyramid, which is the basis for this concept, describes the balance between the methodical and conceptual authority, the strategy authority concerning long-term sustainability of the application environment and the implementation competence concerning individual Businesses Cases.

Combining all the different approaches into one, there will be five areas of tasks:

- Organizational concept, which describes the change management and culture
- Business process reengineering
- User information
- Documentation
- Socialization of the users

4.2 Identifying concrete tasks for the task areas

Now that we described the task areas, the concrete tasks for these areas have to be identified. Therefore we will analyze the literature for tasks and group them to the suitable area.

Organizational concept

Following Engstler’s organization into phases, the „Definition neuer Aufgaben und organisatorischer Rollen im Rahmen der Anwendungsszenarien“ and the development of a „Nutzungskonzeption der neuen Informationsdienste“ (Engstler, 2009, p. 262) are cited as functions for the phase of development. This phase integrates into the area of developing an organizational concept. Dern derives sections which can be arranged actively and allocation processes from the pyramid (Dern, 2006, p. 112) and points out, that in this context, the roles and processes must be changed (Dern, 2006, p. 113). From this, an organization concept can be developed, which defines the roles involved, derives logical units of the organization and illustrates the operational and organizational structure (Dern, 2006, p. 114). The logical units of the organization needed for the management are differentiated thereby according to whether they are „der Abstimmung und der Herbeiführung von Entscheidungen dienen, also die Managementsicht abbilden oder inhaltsorientierte Aufgaben beim Management von IT-Architekturen durchführen.“ (Dern, 2006, p. 119).

Additionally an adjustment of the project structure is needed to develop procedures (for example by organizational rules) and for the „Sicherstellung der Kommunikation zwischen den Projektgremien“ (Engstler, 2009, p. 262). Furthermore the planning and controlling of the development steps have to be executed.

Into the area of planning of non functional requests, as cited by (Engstler, 2009, p. 263 ff.), the following tasks fall:

- Point out the technical quality conditions and the level of maturity of the development environment
- Determine quality criteria for news services
- Specify standards for data security and data protection
- Select modules

Dern therefore sees the ideal case in the development of a roadmap for the introduction of the architecture pyramid, the definition of sponsor, client and steering committee, the definition of business architecture and information architecture, the definition of assistance processes and the formation of a group of architectures (Dern, 2006, p. 132-133). Back & Koch also recommend the creating of a roadmap (2011, p. 138).

A factor that did not differentiate between success and failure is to define the implemantion of the IS as a project and appoint a project manager as often found in older literature (Bradley, 2008, p. 195).

All the relevant tasks for the organizational concept are shown in table 2.

Table 2. Organizational concept related tasks

Abbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthalten

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