Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 2. Summarizes our findings for each of the four companies A, B, C and D
Canada
Tunisia
Company A
Company B
Company C
Company D
Assimilation success factors
Middle managers involvement
++
+
- -
-
Institutional forces
+ +
+
+
+
Reward system
Unchanged
Unchanged
Unchanged
Unchanged
Knowledge management system
Inexistent
Inexistent
Inexistent
Inexistent
No long term rela-
tionship
No long term rela-
tionship
No long term rela-
tionship
No long term rela-
tionship
Vendor's support
Flexibility, user
friendliness, reli-
ability
Flexibility, user
friendliness, reli-
ability
Flexibility, user
friendliness, reli-
ability
Flexibility, user
friendliness, reli-
ability
ERP attributes
Organizational culture
+ +
-
-
-
TPM support
++
+
+ +
+
Strategic alignment
+ +
+
-
-
Users' involvement
+ +
+
-
-
Absorptive capacity
+
-
-
-
IT/ERP expertise
+
+ -
+ -
+ -
Consultants' effectiveness
+
+
+
+
Assimilation challenging factors
High turnover rate of ERP expertise and
superusers
-
+
+ +
+ + +
Small IT team/ work overload
+
+ +
+ +
+ +
Heavy work load for employees
-
+
+ +
+
Information overload
+
+
+
+
Heritage of problems from previous project
stages
+ +
+
+ +
Personal traits (level of IT curiosity, computer
literacy, personal innovativeness with IT, age,
seniority)
+
+
+
+
Legacy thinking
-
+ +
+ +
+ +
On job training risks (transfer of inefficient
methods of work)
+
+
+
+
Redundancy/ parallel systems
-
+ +
+ +
+ +
“sister” company and who were more advanced in
the system deployment. Therefore, it is incumbent
upon the Tunisian IT manager to strive to build
strong relationships based on collaboration, trust,
mutual understanding and clear communication in
order to ensure the involvement and commitment
of managers and users to promote the assimila-
tion of the system in the company. These efforts
need to be buttressed up by the reduction of the
reporting relationship distance between the IT
manager and top management. This would put
the IT manager at a senior position which would
allow him/her to enjoy a higher level of authority
in the organization.
Compared to companies C, Company D
was in a much better position and exhibited a
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