Managing the Organizational Impacts of Information Systems

INTRODUCTION

Information technology is now a ubiquitous and increasingly critical part of the fabric of the modern organization, supporting its day-to-day operations and all aspects of the decision-making process, as well as its strategic positioning. It is, therefore, not perhaps surprising that the implementation of a new technology or information system is likely to result in wide array of impacts to the organization as well as the working lives of individual employees. There is a growing consensus within the literature that many such impacts are not deterministic and cannot therefore be easily predicted prior to a system’s implementation (e.g., DeSanctis & Poole, 1994). The corollary of this is that many of the consequences of an information system’s implementation will be unanticipated (Robey & Boudreau, 1999). While some of these unanticipated consequences, or incidental side effects, may be of a positive nature, negative impacts are also quite common, as IT-induced organizational change often results in user resistance and, in extreme cases, possibly even system rejection (Martinsons & Chong, 1999).
While there is strong evidence that information systems projects are not totally predictable, it can be argued that many of their organizational impacts only remain unanticipated, because systems developers are reluctant to tackle the human and organizational aspects of IT. Systems development projects have typically been viewed as exercises in technical change, rather than socio-tech-nical change; “most investments in IT are technology-led, reflecting too technical an emphasis” (Clegg, 2000). This is a dangerous strategy, because unforeseen and unresolved negative impacts may increase the likelihood of systems failure. Moreover, beneficial impacts, of both a planned and incidental nature, may not be fully realised without an appropriate programme of organizational change. We would argue that if systems development projects are viewed as an exercise in organizational change, in which all potential organizational impacts are proactively and systematically analysed, then many previously unanticipated impacts could be predicted (Doherty & King, 2002). While the importance of treating organizational issues is now widely acknowledged (e.g., Clegg et al., 1997; Eason, 2001), little progress has been made in the development of practical treatment approaches that have succeeded in making the transition from research laboratory to widespread commercial usage. The primary aim of this article is to present an innovative new approach for their proactive treatment. However, in advance of this, it is important to establish the importance of treating organizational issues.


BACKGROUND: THE NEED TO TREAT ORGANIZATIONAL ISSUES

The information systems’ literature is very clear on two points; general levels of failure are far too high and the primary cause of this problem is the failure to adequately treat organizational issues (Clegg et al., 1997; Ewusi-Mensah & Przasnyski, 1994). In this context, the term “organizational issue” relates to those organizationally-oriented facets of systems development projects that need to be treated to ensure that the resultant impacts of an information system are likely to be desirable. A comprehensive checklist of important organizational issues, that was originally drawn from the literature, but then validated over a series of studies (e.g., Doherty & King, 1998, 2001, 2003), is presented in Table 1.
To treat a specific organizational issue, it is necessary to firstly evaluate the likely organizational impact associated with it, and then if necessary take steps to ensure that the resultant impact is likely to be desirable. For example, if it is found that a proposed system is likely to be poorly suited to an organization’s working practices, then it will be necessary to either modify the system’s technical specification, so that the mismatch is avoided, or redesign the working practices so that they are well aligned with the system. In essence, the treatment of organizational issues is the mechanism by which the project team should align the capabilities afforded, and the constraints imposed, by the technical system with the requirements and characteristics of an organization and its individual employees.

Table 1. Checklist of organizational issues to address

Issue Description
Current business The system’s ability to satisfy the organization’s current business needs.
needs
Information systems The system’s alignment with the current information system strategy
strategy
Prioritisation of The prioritising of development effort on those aspects which address the
needs most important business needs.
Future needs of The system’s ability to satisfy the organization’s likely future business
organization needs.
Process design The system’s impact on the design of key business processes.
Health & safety / The likely ergonomic and health & safety implications of the system, such
ergonomic factors as RSI and eye strain.
User motivation / The system’s ability to satisfy user needs and support user motivations.
needs
User working styles The implications of user working styles and personal skills for the
and personal skills system’s design and ongoing use.
Job redesign The proposed system’s impact on the design of working practices.
Timing of The interaction of the system’s implementation with other planned
Implementation concurrent changes.
Organizational The temporary organizational disruption that may be caused by the
disruption implementation of the proposed system.
Organizational The system’s effect on the organizational structure, and the lines of
structure authority.
Organizational The proposed system’s impact on the culture in the organization (i.e., the
culture set of important assumptions (often unstated) which members of an
organization share in common).
Organizational The proposed system’s political implications for the distribution of power
power in the organization.

System developers typically view the system development process as a science, rather than art, which requires the use of structured methods that focus upon the delivery of technically effective systems, on time and within budget. They are extremely reluctant to tackle intangible, ill-defined and politically-sensitive organizational issues (Doherty & King, 2001), for which they’re ill-equipped, in terms of training, competencies and motivation (Clegg, 2000). Consequently, approaches to the treatment of organizational issues have typically been reactive rather than proactive (Clegg et al., 1996) – get the system implemented and then worry about its organizational impacts. There is, therefore, a pressing need to find ways to encourage the systems development community to become more actively engaged in the treatment of organizational issues. One obvious strategy is through the creation of methods, tools and techniques, which are specifically designed to facilitate the treatment of organizational issues. A wide variety of organizationally-oriented approaches have now been proposed, which can be categorised as follows:
1. Socio-technical methods: Socio-technical methods attempt to produce information systems that are technically efficient and coherent, while also being sensitive to organizational and human needs, for example, Ethics (Mumford, 1996) or Multi-view (Avison, Wood-Harper, Vidgen, & Wood, 1998).
2. Tools and techniques for the treatment of specific issues: Many researchers (e.g., Clegg et al., 1996) have attempted to develop tools and techniques to aid in the treatment of specific organizational issues.
3. An organizational impacts analysis: The “organizational impact analysis” (e.g., Sauer, 1993) is typically a one-off study to determine the ways in which a proposed system will affect the organization’s decision-making, power, structure, culture, working practices, and so forth.
While each of the above contributions has been very useful in increasing our understanding of the nature and treatment of organizational issues, there is little evidence that these contributions have made much of an impact on the practice of systems development (Clegg, 2000). This is probably, at least in part, due to technical specialists’ continuing preference for the more technically oriented tools and techniques. However, if a comprehensive, coherent and easy-to-use approach could be found, that complemented their existing methods, then it might have a greater chance of adoption. The remainder of this section describes one such approach, that can best be described as an example of organizational impact analysis.

APPROACH FOR THE TREATMENT OF ORGANIZATIONAL ISSUES

The proposed approach has been formulated from an extensive review of the literature, and the authors’ experience working in this domain for the past few years (e.g., Doherty & King, 1998, 2001, 2004). A schematic representation of the approach, which has been conceptualised as a flow diagram, is presented in Figure 1. Each of the major processes and decision points on this diagram, all of which have been numbered, is reviewed in the following:
1. Identification of planned organizational impacts:While many organizational issues will not be treated until a systems development project is well under way, others, such as the system’s ability system to satisfy “current organizational needs”, will need to be considered right at the very outset, if they are to be the planned outputs of the project.
2. Development of initial requirements specification: The development of the initial requirement’s specification is a fundamental component of all development methods, and can be conducted using the proprietary or in-house method of the developers choosing.
While the previous two stages occur only once, at the project’s outset, it is envisaged that the following stages will be repeated at key stages in the systems development process, for each of the organizational issues in the checklist (see Table 1), in turn.
3. Review of organizational issues: Assess the system’s likely impacts, with regard to each organizational issue. The process is designed to ensure that the planned impacts will ultimately come to fruition, while any incidental impacts will be effectively identified and managed.
4. Determine existence of organizational impacts: The output of the review procedure, described previously, will be an assessment of whether there is a significant organizational impact, associated with each organizational issue.
5. Evaluation of desirability of impacts: The desirability of each identified impact must be assessed, to determine whether it is likely to be of a positive or negative nature. For example, an assessment of the system’s impact on the motivation of users might identify a negative impact, such as user resistance or resentment, due to changes in their work practices. Potential solutions might be of a technical nature, such as changing the system’s design to give the user more control over their work, or an organisational orientation, for example, improving the users’ terms and conditions, by way of compensation.
6. Assessment of potential for increasing desirability of impacts: If the previous stage has identified a desirable impact, associated with an organizational issue, it is important to consider whether the impact could be made even more positive if the information system design were to be modified.
7. Is the situation retrievable?: In situations where a potentially undesirable impact of the system’s operation has been identified then it is necessary to consider whether the situation is retrievable or not.
8. Is the remedy technical?: Having identified potentially negative, yet retrievable, impacts, associated with the system implementation, a decision must be made as to whether the remedy is of a technical or organizational nature.
9. Evaluation of potential for impacts: If it has been discovered that there is no impact, associated with a particular organizational issue, then it is important to question whether there should be an impact. If, for example, it has been determined that the system is unlikely to change working practices, questions might be raised as to whether the system could be used to stream-line or enrich the design of jobs.

Figure 1. Approach to treatment of organizational issues

Approach to treatment of organizational issues
10. No changes required: In the cases where there is no actual impact or potential for any specific organizational issue then there is no requirement to either change the system’s specification or institute a programme of organizational change.
11. Modification of specification: In many situations, the organizational issue’s review process will necessitate changes to the system’s specification, in order to correct a negative impact, or evoke a more positive impact.
12. Development of program of organizational change: In situations where organizational impacts have been identified that have judged to be desirable, it is important that a programme of organizational change is planned and implemented to ensure that the impact is realised.
13. Abort project: In situations where it has been found that the introduction of an information system is likely to result in significant organizational impacts, of a negative nature, then the project should be aborted.
At a minimum, it is envisaged that the organizational impacts will be assessed, using this approach, at the following key stages of the development process (Figure 2): on completion of the requirements specification, then again at the end of the development phase and then very soon after implementation. However, for very complex projects, or those that are likely to be the catalyst for significant organizational change, it is recommended that the analysis should be repeated more frequently, particularly during the design phase. Moreover, it is recommended that the organizational impact analysis be repeated a number of times over the systems working life. This would be one way of operationalising Orlikowski, Yates, Okamura, and Fujimoto’s (1995, p.424) concept of “technology-use mediation”, which they define as: “deliberate, ongoing and organizationally sanctioned intervention within the context of use that helps to adapt new technology to its context, modifies the context as appropriate to accommodate the use of the technology, and facilitates the ongoing effectiveness of the technology over time.”
It should be noted that once the system goes live, the organizational impact analysis procedure will not need to address the full range of organizational issues, as some -such as prioritization, timing of implementation, and organizational disruption – will no longer be relevant in an operational context.
While there will be a number of separate applications of the organizational impact analysis, they are not totally independent, as it is envisaged that the outcomes and findings of any given iteration of the of the approach might prompt or flag-up issues that need to be addressed in a subsequent iteration. It should also be remembered that many organizational impacts are interdependent and consequently changes made with respect to one specific issue might engender impacts in other areas. One of the obvious benefits of adopting an iterative approach is that it allows changing requirements to be monitored and accommodated, on an on-going basis.
In terms of who is involved in the analysis of the impacts and the identification of appropriate changes to the system or the organization, to ensure the impacts will ultimately be desirable, it is recommended that the exercise be very inclusive. As a key objective of socio-technical approaches is to achieve consensus among all the system’s stakeholders, it is envisaged that the proposed approach will act as a mechanism for channeling a debate about organizational change. As Markus and Benjamin (1997, p.55) put it:”the hard reality of IT-enabled transformation is that change is everyone’s job.”

Figure 2. Relationship between systems development process and application of the organziational impact analysis

Relationship between systems development process and application of the organziational impact analysis

FUTURE TRENDS

As the scope and strategic importance of information systems continues to grow, so does the need to find better ways of matching them to their organizational context, to ensure that they deliver a significant contribution to organizational performance. Consequently, there is an urgent need for practical and easy-to-use methods to aid systems development professionals in managing the organizational impacts of the systems for which they are responsible. To this end, our immediate priority is to test the provisional framework on a variety of systems development projects, and use the feedback from these exercises to further define exactly how different organizational impacts can best be analyzed and managed.

CONCLUSION

Many information systems researchers have recognised the need for more effective socio-technical tools and methods to be developed. While the work described in this article is not trying to develop a highly specific tool or technique, it does propose a more general framework to promote the systematic and coherent treatment of organizational issues. The chief benefits of the proposed approach are that it presents systems developers with a systematic framework which obliges them to confront organizational issues and provides them with the means to effectively navigate their way through a very complex decision-making process. Moreover, a comparison of this approach with some of its predecessors allows the following distinctions to be made:
• Complementary: The proposed approach complements, rather than replaces, existing development tools and methods. There is no requirement for systems developers to abandon there tried and tested practices.
• Straightforward: The approach adopts a common-sense perspective, and it should, therefore, be relatively easy to learn and apply.
• Proactive: By using this approach, organizations will ensure that potential problems are recognised and opportunities are identified and exploited in a timely and effective manner.
• Comprehensive: The approach is comprehensive and can cope with a wide range of potential impacts.
• Flexible: The approach is highly flexible and can be adapted to suit the requirements of a wide variety of information systems projects
In essence this approach is inviting systems developers to periodically stand back from the systems development process and, in conjunction with a wide variety of stakeholders, assess the likely impacts of their work on the design and operation of the organization. While there are a number of potential benefits to the proposed approach, it is also important to issue a health warning: These ideas are provisional and exploratory, and there is much further work required to translate them into a robust and reliable tool.

KEY TERMS

Incidental Impacts: Impacts that are un-planned, byproducts of the system’s development process that had not, or could not, have been envisaged at the project’s outset.
Organizational Impact Analysis: A one-off study to determine the ways in which a proposed system will affect the organization, in areas such as power, structure, culture, working practices, and so forth.
Organizational Issues: Those issues which need to be treated during the systems development process to ensure that the individual human, wider social and economic impacts of the resultant computer-based information system are likely to be desirable.
Planned Impacts: The anticipated outcomes of a systems development project that were identified at the project’s outset, and are typically critical to its ultimate success.
Socio-technical Methods: Development methods that attempt to produce systems that are both technically efficient and organizationally sensitive.
Systems Failure: Systems abandoned before completion, systems completed but never used, under used or failing to deliver key aspects of functionality, and projects that are significantly over budget or schedule.

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