Politics, Complexity, and Systems Implementation

Abstract

This article identifies the role of power and politics in systems implementation under a critical epistemology. Research in information systems has typically adopted a positivist or interpretive approach. This article highlights the use of the critical epistemology, providing a case study exploring the power and politics in the systems implementation process. Previous implementation studies that have investigated human and political factors involved in systems implementation have taken a simplistic view of power and politics. A critical, poststructuralist view of power provides a lens for observing the selection and implementation of an enterprise-wide learning management system. Such an approach has important implications for research methods as the critical epistemology needed is challenged by acceptance of bias and the need to expose it as an important factor in explaining success and/or failure in systems implementation. This article illustrates how useful a critical approach is in seeking out the real impact of power and politics in systems implementation and offers an alternative perspective that provides more insight into the observed process.T his article addresses the impact of power, coalitions, conflict, and political ramifications of diverse, interest-driven groups in an organization on the implementation of a complex organization-wide system. The nature of the problem partially determines why a researcher should select a particular methodology and epistemology (Creswell, 1994). There has been a tradition in the information systems discipline that if one selects a quantitative approach for one's research, then one is automatically adopting a positivist approach. Similarly, if one adopts a qualitative approach, then one is adopting an interpretive approach (Chua, 1986). This approach, arguably, is simplistic in nature, and often there are more factors that affect the epistemology the researcher adopts (Klein & Myers, 1999;Orlikowski & Baroudi, 1991). This article aims to illustrate the usefulness of a critical approach in the information systems discipline and provide a case supporting the use of the critical epistemology in the implementation of a learning management system (LMS) in Newlands University.According to Kincheloe and McLaren (2000), critical researchers are concerned with "issues of power and justice and the ways that the economy, matters of race, class and gender, ideologies, discourses, education and other social institutions, and cultural dynamics interact to construct a social system" (p.

Who's on the other side of the table? Power perceptions in construction projects—Thai case studies

“…Power is here seen as constructed in social contexts and manifests its influence in all social contexts (Corbitt 2000;Corbitt and Thanasankit 2002;Nguyen et al 2006;Peszynski and Corbitt 2006). Construction projects are social contexts where power is constructed and social relations emerge based on that constructed power.…”

Understanding Human Factors in Systems Selection and Implementation

“…In other words, this viewpoint ignores or reduces the "understanding of organisations characterised by a belief in rational management; a denial of the existence of power relations and conflicts; a tendency to see organisations as individual closed entities; and limited focus on the business environment" (Mitev, 2001, p. 85). Implementation however, is neither driven entirely by factors of success or failure (Corbitt, 1997;Borum & Christiansen, 2006;Peszynski & Corbitt, 2006). Rather, the implementation process in information systems is reflective of the stakeholder relationship interactions and the impact of the context, either business, organisational, social or cultural, in which the implementation occurs.…”

Development of a user-resistance-aware framework for implementing enterprise resource planning systems

“…This research addressed the challenges that ERP implementation projects encounter, in the human-side of organisations, due particularly to the changes associated with such projects. Studies (e.g., Lapointe and Rivard, 2005;Motwani et al, 2008;Peszynski, 2006) show that the high degree of change, happening due to ERP implementation, raise severe levels of negative human affections and user resistance, that are recognised as the most influential failure factor for ERP implementation projects (e.g., Panorama Consulting Group, 2016;Peszynski, 2006;Razavi and Ahamad, 2011). This research presented a resistance-aware framework for ERP implementation projects.…”

“…However, the reports demonstrate that many of IS projects fail due to user resistance (e.g., Panorama Consulting Group, 2016;Peszynski, 2006;Razavi and Ahamad, 2011), which indicates there is still a gap between the knowledge and practice in the field. Evidently, the project managers of such projects are not equipped with the effective tools and techniques which help them either avoid or overcome user resistance during the implementation process.…”

“…As will be discussed later, the human-related issues potentially affect ERP implementation projects and decrease their success rate dramatically (Lapointe and Rivard, 2005;Motwani et al, 2008). Even more, numerous studies have shown that this resistance is the most influential failure factor for such projects (Peszynski, 2006;Razavi and Ahamad, 2011).…”