REVISED ECIS DC RESEARCH PROPOSAL THE IMPLEMENTATION OF ERP TECHNOLOGY WITHIN A UNIVERSITY ADMINISTRATION: WORKING TO ACHIEVE A LOCAL SYSTEM FROM THE ‘GLOBAL SOLUTION’
Erica L. Wagner Department of Information Systems The London School of Economics and Political Science St Clements Building, Houghton St, London WC2A Phone: 011 44 (0) 20 7955 7655 Fax: 011 44 (0) 20 7955 7385
[email protected] Word count: 3,500 Keywords: AI0102; AI0802; DA0303; EL06; FD05; FD07 Abstract This proposal details a doctoral study analyzing one of the first ERP projects within a prestigious US university, an initiative that opened organizational ‘doors’ to multiple actor–networks whose narratives challenged system localization efforts. University administrators find themselves within an increasingly complex and competitive environment and have turned to ICT’s for support. Through an in-depth, qualitative case study this project seeks to answer the following research questions. Why are contentious global, ERP business systems being implemented within this distinctive setting? How do people cope with the introduction of previously unknown political forces and how do these alien influences shape the outcome of the project? The paper presents a distinctive use of social theory as the means for addressing this research agenda and presents expected contributions to theory and practice. In the final section of the proposal the most pressing challenges for the completion of the doctoral thesis are addressed.
Background and Objectives In the last half of the 21st century, “The ERP [Enterprise Resource Planning] Revolution” was named (Ross 1998) and enterprise-wide systems were in use within most Fortune 500 companies (Kumar and van Hillegersberg 2000). Fuelled by media coverage of the feared year two-thousand (Y2K) millennium bug, the trend increased as a mass of organizations from a variety of industries, jumped on the ERP bandwagon (Kremers and Dissel 2000; Kumar and van Hillegersberg 2000). By early 2000, ERPrelated sales generated $40 billion in revenue split between software vendors and consulting firms (Willcocks and Sykes 2000) and practitioner literature claimed enterprise systems were a prerequisite for business success in the twenty-first century (Davenport 2000; Langerwalter 1999; Norris et al. 2000). This technology promises to replace discrete, homegrown systems with an integrated, enterprise-wide infrastructure that will streamline organizational activities and eliminate duplication of effort and data (Markus and Tanis 2000).
Software vendors sell standard ERP software packages as appropriate ‘solutions’ for multiple markets (Kremers and Dissel 2000; Kumar and van Hillegersberg 2000). However, it is important to note that the current generation of ERP systems evolved from technology designed to aid operations in the manufacturing industry (Klaus, Rosemann and Gable 2000).
The software embeds a template of “best business
practices” based on a “traditional, hierarchical [and] functional view of organizations” (Kumar and van Hillegersberg 2000), which limits the extent to which the technology can be customized to meet local organizational needs.
Despite this, standard ERP
technology has been adopted within diverse contexts. The higher education industry is an interesting current case, although it has taken to purchasing packaged software rather
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later than profit-driven, business corporations, it too has jumped on the ERP bandwagon (Allen and Kern 2001; Mahrer 1999; Pollock 1999; Volkoff 1999).
Weick (1976) defined the university structure as a “loosely coupled community of scholars” but today this environment is being replaced by a more corporate business model (Gibbons et al. 1994; McNay 1995; Reed 2000; Trow 1993).
University
governance is now the domain of professional managers who must compete within a global higher education marketplace that has grown increasingly complex and competitive over the past ten years (Barnett 2000; Brennan et al. 1999; Gumport 2000). This has sparked a broad industry trend for the implementation of standard software packages to support pedagogy, research activities and administrative functions (see for example Newcastle Higher Education Symposium (2000) on The Future of Universities).
This proposal outlines a doctoral research study, which follows one of the first ERP project initiatives within the U.S. higher education industry, a high-profile effort between an Ivy League university and a major software vendor who together contracted to develop and implement flagship technology. The breadth of this project involved the replacement of existing administrative systems and their underlying business processes in three key areas: financial management, human resources and payroll and grants and contracts administration. The project scope was unprecedented for an historically selfdirected university administration and the timing of the project meant external IT experts were entering a unique industry domain of which they were ignorant to many of its complex business practices.
This research was designed to investigate the way in which the university traversed an unfamiliar project landscape and managed to negotiate their multiple, local work
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practices into a major software vendors’ ‘global’ technological solution. The power of ERP software to embed standardized business models within organizations has generated research focused on the agency and role of the technology in negatively subverting the progress of ERP projects (Ciborra 2000; Hanseth and Braa 1998, 1999; Hanseth et al. pending publication).
These studies background other important
processes of negotiation that occur and thereby skew our understanding of localization efforts. We argue that achieving a local system from a global standard is not only about the technological capability of the ERP but also the political prowess and artistry involved in successfully translating and maintaining interests over time.
Through a narrative research approach informed by concepts from actor-network theory, this doctoral research project develops our understanding of IS project initiatives which has implications for both higher education institutions and the implementation and use of ERP systems. Although in some ERP implementation literature it is easy to get the impression that creating a locally accepted system is somehow a linear process and that technology often controls the success or failure of a project (Bancroft 1996; Bancroft, Seip and Sprengel 1998; Brown and Vessey 1999; Parr, Shanks and Darke 1999), this study argues that it is rarely that neat and tidy. Rather, this research highlights the localization process as an achievement of order (Monteiro 2000) resulting from successive negotiations between disparate actor-networks. As Latour (1999) says, when their goals are frustrated actors take detours through the goals of others resulting in a general ‘drift’ (Latour 1999). The narrative of one becomes intermingled with the narrative of the other and the drift that emerges represents not solution two overtaking solution one, but a fusing of multiple interests. This project aims to illustrate the complex and drifting processes by which a local system is created by highlighting the way in which actors
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employ narrative to leverage important moments, create “folds” in time (Kavanagh and Araujo 1995), and get themselves ‘scripted’ into the larger project narrative.
This research proposal is organized as follows; we present the research questions in the next section and then provide an overview of the project’s theoretical basis. This is followed by our research methodology and empirical design. The penultimate section presents our expected contributions for research and practice. The paper concludes with a discussion of challenges faced in completing the doctoral thesis.
Research Questions This doctoral research project focuses on the localization of ERP technology as the basis for university administrative systems in order to answer the following research questions. Why are contentious global, ERP business systems being implemented within this distinctive setting? How do people cope with the introduction of previously unknown political forces and how do these alien influences shape the outcome of the project? Through a distinctive use of social theory, the study aims to reveal the important role of narrative in crafting organizational reality by focusing on the university’s choice to implement a standard ERP package and the negotiations that allowed it to be compromised.
The next section briefly outlines the theoretical grounding of this
doctoral research project in order to provide the reader with a basis for understanding the way in which the data were collected, handled and analyzed.
Use of Theory Narrative This research adopts a narrative approach to investigate the dynamics of creating a locally accepted information system within an organization. Narrative research is a fairly recent
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innovation used to analyze aspects of IS projects (see for example Brown 1998; Brown and Jones 1998; Davidson 1997). A narrative research approach presents us with an opportunity to analyze the flow of events differently and explore the characteristics of particular project drifts, which could be valuable to understanding the processes of localization involved in strategic ERP projects.
Narratives do not offer 'the facts’; rather, they provide different interpretations of the same event. Czarniawska's (1997, 1998, 1999) interpretive understanding of narrative embraces Weick's (1979, 1995) notion of organizational sense making in which individuals, continually confronted with new experiences, employ narrative in order to integrate and make meaningful previously meaningless signs. Narratives are not static artifacts waiting to be collected and analyzed by researchers. Rather, they are continually being formed as part of a sense-making process (in IS and organizational studies see Boje 1991; Boland and Tenkasi 1995; Gabriel 1995).
Just as narratives are “never ending constructions of meaning within organizations” (Czarniawska, 1998), it follows that multiple narratives exist across the organization at any given moment in time. A strength of the narrative research approach is its ability to elicit multiple perspectives from the point of view of participants. Moreover, we join with information systems researchers (Boland and Schultze 1995; Brown 1998; Brown and Jones 1998) who view narrative as one form of evidence that highlights the construction of multiple realities within organizations. Boland and Schultze (1995) remind us that whilst narrative provides a powerful tool for convincing readers of a particular argument, there always exists an alternative narrative vying for the dominant position.
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Narratives are both a sense-making device for the teller, and are inherently rhetorical as they attempt to persuade and convince others of their version of reality (Riessman 1993). The power relations underpinning narratives has been the focus of several organizational change studies (Boje 1995; Boland and Schultze 1995; Czarniawska 1998; Filby and Willmott 1988; Mumby 1987). In an article on an IS implementation project, Brown (1998) presents multiple interpretations of an initiative from different stakeholder viewpoints and illustrates how the agenda of the narrator can privilege one story and silence others (Brown 1998). The article finds that through narrative individuals and groups work to construct and safeguard a preferred organizational reality.
This doctoral research project aims to develop our understanding of the power relations inherent within narratives by arguing that an important aspect of narrativization is the ability to maintain credibility over time, thereby making it more difficult for alternative narratives to persist.
Through the application of actor-network theory (ANT) the
researcher is able to emphasize this struggle for domination and illustrate the role that narrative plays in the localization of standard ERP technology.
Actor-Network Theory ANT was originally conceived by Bruno Latour (1987) and Michel Callon (1986) as part of the field of science and technology studies (STS), which focuses on how the work of society is accomplished (Latour 1999). ANT conceptualizes technologies as dynamically constituted and inscribed (Monteiro 2000) with programmes of action (Akrich and Latour 1992), which become embedded during negotiations within complex sociotechnical networks (Walsham 2001).
Therefore, ANT advocates a broad sense of
agency, assigning a symmetrical relationship to (non)human actors for purposes of analysis (Latour 1999). Adopting an ANT perspective can help highlight transformations
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involved in forming heterogeneous networks (Latour 1999) before these activities become black boxed – hidden from observation (Vidgen and McMaster 1996). Focusing on this process foregrounds how order is achieved and relationships are established (Monteiro 2000).
During project initiatives, actors vie for the dominance of their narrative and struggle to colonize the future through successive “trials of strength” (Kavanagh and Araujo 1995) where the outcome results in the inscription (Callon 1991) of interests within artifacts, software, routines, norms and practices.
These tangible products lend a degree of
irreversibility (Callon 1991) and stability to the network and thereby create a “fold” in time which limits and enables future opportunities (Kavanagh and Araujo 1995). The strength of these inscriptions is tenuous because alternative narratives are offered by opposing networks and actors can become recalcitrant, choosing to align themselves with an alternative network. The extent to which inscriptions become immutable mobiles (Walsham 1997), network elements that are transportable across time and space, is determined by the ability of delegate actors to conscript or enroll a diffuse body of allies and further mobilize network goals and aims (Akrich and Latour 1992).
Latour (1999) suggests that language (in this case narrative) is a powerful tool for gaining access to these power relations by eliciting explanations from those involved in the negotiations. Our research focuses on gaining access to these processes of negotiation over time in order to understand how disparate actor-networks imbued with various narratives, vie for a dominant position during an ERP project initiative. In the next section we outline our research methodology, which helps reveal the way in which these narratives influence the customization and use of the ERP system.
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Research Methodology This research project adopts an interpretive epistemology (Orlikowski and Baroudi 1991; Walsham 1993) supported by a qualitative research approach and focusing on a longitudinal case study. Interpretive researchers believe reality is socially constructed and is articulated as a result of human sense making activities over time (Walsham 1993) and can be accessed through the study of language, symbols and artifacts (Klein and Myers 1999). Therefore, this research project seeks to elicit multiple points of view in order to understand the processes of negotiation that exist during an ERP project initiative.
The decision to conduct case research was based upon the researcher’s objective to obtain and represent multiple interpretations of an organizational change process over a period of time. Walsham (1993) notes that intepretivist researchers conducting case research strive for “validity…not [from] the representativeness of such cases in a statistical sense, but on the plausibility and cogency of the logical reasoning used in describing the results from the cases and in drawing conclusions from them.”
The goal
of this research project is to illuminate the in situ narrative practices of individuals as they work to localize a standard technology package within a specific context.
Empirical Design The empirical research was conducted at an Ivy League university, which will be referred to by the anonym 'Ivy' in order to evoke an archetype through which readers can relate their experiences. One hundred and twenty interviews were conducted with project members and the wider university community. Regular intervals of intensive fieldwork during different intense phases of negotiation (trials of strength) and project orientation included consistent repeat interviews with actors. Important issues and actors referred to in the interviews set the agenda and guided the researcher to the next set of interviews.
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According to the principle of emergence (Mead 1980), the present is the only loci of reality and as it emerges we make sense of it, adjusting our interpretation of the past and future accordingly (Adam 1995). The fieldwork was designed to reflect this dynamic process of interpretation.
The majority of the interviews followed the narrative interviewing (NI) convention, which provides a temporal frame of reference (for example, "Describe the last project phase to me.") and then allows the interviewees to narrate, without interruption, their interpretations of important moments of negotiation in front of them at that time (Bauer 1996). All the interviews were tape-recorded and verbatim transcripts were produced which facilitated the process of analysis (Bauer 1996; Riessman 1993). In addition, we observed critical meetings and collected internal and external documents related to the project, which were analyzed as other organizational narratives.
Preliminary data analysis has focused on three narratives of the unknown each belonging to a powerful network that came to dominate at different moments in time during the project initiative. The researcher argues that these actors influenced both the university’s choice to implement a standard ERP package and allowed it to be compromised. The analysis begins with the network of Ivy University’s Vice President for Finannce and Administration whose narrative of a global unknown impacted the commissioning of the ERP project, setting in motion a powerful temporality that would influence Ivy’s future. Over time, the VP’s network becomes connected to the Project Team’s narrative of a collective unknown, which further colonized Ivy’s future through the creation of a durable boundary-crossing network imposed upon the working rhythms of its administrative staff. The final ‘fold in time’ highlights the faculty network whose narrative delayed the localization of the ERP technology by negotiating a voice for the local unknown which had
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been relegated to the periphery during the project initiative. The researcher expects to elaborate on her data analysis during her presentation at the doctoral consortium. In the next section expected contributions to both theory and practice are highlighted.
Expected Contribution This research project contributes to the field of information systems in several ways. Firstly, through the distinctive use of social theory the thesis extends our understanding of how a locally accepted information system is created during project initiatives. The researcher argues that through in situ narrative research we can gain access to the sense making practices and power relations which are often black boxed soon after a “fold” in time occurs. We often found that interviewees would not want to discuss the issues that they had made the agenda of the last interview, since in their minds 'the world had moved on'. What had been a open controversy during a certain period had become 'black boxed' and 'a matter of fact' (Latour 1999) for the interviewee. For example, as the researcher began the last phase of interviews, one project team leader said that she would be "fascinated" to read her transcripts from interviews over the last two years, because her understanding of the project had changed so much over time that she actually couldn't remember how she had made sense of it previously. A key reason for this is that, understandably, the temporal frame of interest to the interviewee tends to be radically different from the researcher.
Researchers who analyze texts or take 'snapshots' of organizations may well gather important data illuminating current issues, or reflections on the past that convey the distillation of experience. This may be valuable and contribute to a 'cumulative wisdom' about information systems development and implementation. However, it is suggested the very nature of the negotiation processes that characterize drift dynamics means that
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actors are frequently so thoroughly enrolled that they can no longer 'open the black box' or revive the controversies and complexity that transported them to the present. It becomes nearly impossible to explain how localization processes were (im)possible. Following the ebb and flow of project negotiations through the lens of actor-network theory highlights the interconnectivity and intentionality of actors involved in multiple collectives. The study of Ivy University’s ERP project initiative foregrounds the art of politics involved in localizing standard technology through the analysis of multiple narratives, which form around successive trials of strength.
Secondly, this doctoral research project documents and reflects upon the growing trend for implementing standardised ‘off-the-shelf’ technology within organisations.
In
contrast to the development of in-house information systems designed specifically to fit the needs of the organization, ERP technology requires careful consideration about the impact of customizing standard, integrated technology. This research project contributes to a changing implementation discourse by providing an empirically grounded analysis focused on understanding the work involved in achieving a locally accepted information system. The weaving from foreground to background of different dominant narratives over time highlights the complex processes by which communities manage to ‘carry on’ in the face of potentially uncertain outcomes and make local systems happen.
This conceptual approach may help practitioners to consider the highly situated nature of implementing and using information systems in order to identify possible sources of resistance in advance and to manage the issues contributing to the legitimization or breakdown of a project initiative. System development teams can learn to identify potential trials of strength through which interests must be translated if the project is to move forward.
These events could sensitize members of the initiative to issues
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concerning the actors involved in negotiations.
Being cognizant of highly situated
network processes encourages timely and informed decision making throughout the project initiative. This in turn will impact the ease with which the ERP technology will become a locally accepted information system.
Finally, creating a local information system from a ‘global’ software packages presents unique challenges for organizations that persist beyond the localization of the ERP technology. For many, implementing standard technology such as ERP requires multiyear project initiatives involving collaboration with disparate organizational networks and external experts. Not only are these alliances difficult to negotiate during the initial implementation project; they remain an important influence over local priorities in the longer term because of system upgrades and maintenance contracts. Research focused on how communities manage to negotiate a platform for their local agenda in the midst of powerful, conflicting narratives should take precedence as organizations embark on standard technology projects.
Research Challenges This research project attempts to incorporate a narrative research approach with concepts from actor-network theory in order to provide insight into the nature of localizing standard technology within an organization. The researcher has struggled to limit her scope for purposes of the thesis and has had to decide upon which aspects of the data she would focus. A dominant theme in the research has been the relationship between narrative and time, which the researcher suggests, has been under-theorized in previous literature. She hopes to develop a temporal perspective to data analysis through her reading of the work of Barbara Adam (1990, 1995, 1998). It is suggested that this has interesting consequences for the nature and quality of the findings generated from the
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case study, which could be particularly valuable to researchers attempting to understand IS project initiatives where local acceptance is critical to the change management strategy.
In addition the researcher is most recently challenged by tactical considerations related to the presentation of the data analysis within the thesis, which will highlight the richness of the findings, communicate the complexity of the situation and maintain a tightly focused thesis. The researcher aims to incorporate into her analysis the process by which she systematically evaluated her findings in order to provide a degree of validity and plausibility to her research. This is currently being addressed through her readings of intensive field research published within special issues of MIS Quarterly (March 1999; September 2000).
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