Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are widely used by large corporations around the world. Recently universities have turned to ERP as a means of replacing existing management and administration computer systems. In this article we provide analysis of the rollout of an ERP system in one particular institution in the UK, the particular focus being on how the development, implementation and use of both generic and university specific functionality is mediated and shaped by a fundamental and long standing tension within universities: this is the extent to which higher education institutions are organisations much like any other and the extent to which they are 'unique'. The aim of this article is not to attempt to settle this issue of similarity/difference in one way or another. Rather, it seeks to illustrate the value of taking discussions of similarity relationships surrounding the university and other organisations as the topic of analysis. One way of working with these kinds of issues without resolving them is to consider their 'distribution' and where ERP shifts the responsibility for their final resolution. This is a novel and insightful way of understanding how ERP systems are refashioning the identity of universities. We suggest, moreover, that ERP software is 'accompanied' by such tensions in which ever site it is implemented. The research presented here is based on a participant observation study carried over the period of three years.

would like to acknowledge the support of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) who funded the research presented in this article. If forms part of work conducted under an ESRC Fellowship entitled: The Social Study of the Information Technology Marketplace. We would like to thank those industry analysts and others who were kind enough to make themselves available for interview. We graciously acknowledge the help and advice of the Editor and anonymous referees who provided very helpful comments on drafts of this paper. Thanks also must go to the following people for providing useful suggestions and ideas during the writing process.

The business of technological expectations has yet to be explored thoroughly by scholars interested in the role of expectations and visions in the emergence of technological innovations. However, intermediaries specializing in the production, commodification and selling of future-oriented knowledge have emerged to exert new kinds of influence on the shaping of technology and innovation. We focus on the work of those specialist forms of consultants known as ‘industry analysts’ and consider them as promissory organizations to capture how they are successful in mobilizing and indeed increasingly organizing expectations within procurement and innovation markets. Our aim is to highlight the important role these actors play in shaping technologies and, in so doing, to show how they typically exhibit complex and highly uneven forms of influence. The paper is organized around a central question: Why are certain kinds of promissory behaviour more influential than others? To answer this, we draw from discussions of the ‘constitutive’ nature of promises in the literature on technology expectations, which provide a useful but arguably partial analytical approach for articulating the dynamics and differences surrounding product based expectations. We thus supplement our understanding with recent developments in Economic Sociology and the Sociology of Finance where an ambitious theoretical framework is unfolding in relation to the ‘performativity of economic theory’. By contrasting different forms of promissory work conducted by industry analysts and varying forms of accountability to which this work is subject, we begin to map out a typology that characterises promissory behaviour according to differences in kind and effect.

In health research and services, and in many other domains, we note the emergence of large-scale information systems intended for long-term use with multiple users and uses. These einfrastructures are becoming more widespread and pervasive and, by enabling effective sharing of information and coordination of activities between diverse, dispersed groups, are expected to transform knowledge-based work. Social scientists have sought to analyse the significance of these systems and the processes by which they are created. Much current attention has been drawn to the often-problematic experience of those attempting to establish them. By contrast, this paper is inspired by concerns about the theoretical and methodological weakness of many studies of technology and work organisation-particularly the dominance of relatively short-term, often single site studies of technology implementation. These weaknesses are particularly acute in relation to the analysis of infrastructural technologies. We explore the relevance to such analysis of recent developments in what we call the Biography of Artefacts (BoA) perspective-which emphasises the value of strategic ethnography: theoretically-informed, multi-site and longitudinal studies: We seek to draw insights here from a programme of empirical research into the long-term evolution of corporate e-infrastructures (reflected in current Enterprise Resource Planning systems) and review some new conceptual tools arising from recent research into e-Infrastructures (e-Is). These are particularly relevant to understanding the current and ongoing difficulties encountered in attempts to develop large-scale Health Infrastructures.

The dominant theme within extant research on performance and ranking conceptualises the organisational response to a ranking as one where it responds by 'conforming' to the measure (Korberger and Carter 2010, Scott and Orlikowski 2012, Shore and Wright 2015). This process of 'reactivity' (Espeland and Sauder 2007), however, is not always possible, especially in the complex and rapidly-changing settings described in this paper. In certain contexts organisations are typically surrounded by multiple measures, raising the question as to which they should align. Drawing on an ethnographic study across a number of sites, we show how some organisations instead of conforming to a single measure are 'transforming' to respond to the challenge of multiple rankings, by constructing and elaborating new forms of expertise, knowledge and connection with rankers. Unlike prior research that presents organisations as constrained by systems of measuring (which we name 'reactive conformance'), we examine how they are becoming more proactive towards this challenge (described as 'reflexive transformation'). Specifically, building on themes from accounting and the 'sociology of worth', we present evidence that organisations exercise greater choice than expected about which rankings they respond to, shape their ranked positions, as well as wield influence over assessment criteria and the wider evaluative ecosystem.