Reconciling global and local needs: a canonical action research project to deal with workarounds

Abstract

This paper discusses how research with practitioners can help reconcile the top-down requirements of headquarters with the bottom-up local needs in the context of global information systems. Based on a 12-month canonical action research project that took place at the Chinese branches of a French multinational corporation, our research revealed and addressed workarounds that the Chinese users of a company-wide global enterprise resource planning system had put in place that were not expected nor desired by company headquarters. From the local users' point of view, they were necessary to deal with Chinese legislation and cultural practices, but from the French headquarters' point of view, they meant that many of the potential gains of global standards were lost. Activity theory was used as a focal theory to analyse each of these workarounds and business process management as an instrumental theory to design solutions to the workarounds. We describe in detail how we used canonical action research to successfully deal with exemplars of each of the three types of workaround identified (data adjustments, process adjustments and parallel-system adjustments). Unusually, the research relates to post-implementation change rather than to that looking at change occurring before and during implementation. We argue that canonical action research and the particular combination of activity theory and business process management are appropriate for dealing with workarounds and this has not been demonstrated previously. Further, our researchdeemed successful by managers, users and researchers aliketook place in China where previous literature suggests only limited success with such global systems.

Conceptualizing Workarounds: Meanings and Manifestations in Information Systems Research

“…Studies also commonly explained workarounds as resulting from conflict between top-down pressure and bottom-up constraints from day-to-day operational work. Top-down pressure can include company rules and policies (Choudrie & Zamani, 2016), enterprise systems requirements from headquarters (Malaurent & Avison, 2016), or external pressure from regulations or accrediting (Azad & King, 2012;Huuskonen & Vakkari, 2013). Bottom-up constraints can include material constraints, work ethos, and staff's lack of interest in IS (Azad & King, 2012;Choudrie & Zamani, 2016).…”

From an apparent failure to a success story: ERP in China—Post implementation

“…From the Chinese users' point of view, the ERP system was impeding proper execution of their local organizational activities (Strong & Volkoff, 2010). Workarounds are user adaptations and improvisations that overcome anomalies and constraints preventing the system being fully effective from the users' point of view (Alter, 2014;Malaurent & Avison, 2015). The last clause (in italics) has been added by us as headquarters management -as we shall see -may well not have the same perspective as the Chinese users on at least some of the workarounds.…”

“…The team were expected to consult, co-operate with and inform local users, ensuring champion key users were on board, and train affected parties so that each decision would not be followed by resistance. We will now look at how three workarounds were dealt with (more detail can be found in Malaurent and Avison (2015)). …”

“…This is somewhat different to the first role as in this case, the researcher is involved with the practitioners making changes to practice, not simply observing and reporting to management. The other side of this role consists of reflecting on the experience and disseminating this research, for example, via Malaurent and Avison (2015) and as a teaching case study (as in this paper). This synergetic process of research informing practice and practice informing research in this way is known as action research (see, for example, Avison, Lau, Myers, & Nielson (1999)).…”

The art of storytelling

“…In the second paper, Julien Malaurent and David Avison (Malaurent & Avison, ) tell the story of how top‐down headquarters requirements can be balanced with bottom‐up local needs in the context of an IS implementation effort at the Chinese branches of a French multinational corporation. A key theme of this story is workarounds: local Chinese employees created workarounds in order to address local cultural and legal requirements; however, the same workarounds violated global corporate norms, rendering nugatory the very benefits that the IS was supposed to deliver.…”