Date of Award
2013
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
PhD in Business
Department
Department of Information and Process Management
First Advisor
Sue Newell
Second Advisor
M. Lynne Markus
Third Advisor
Kevin C. Desouza
Abstract
Drawing on four theories of practice – Communities of Practice (CoP), Bourdieu's theory of practice, Pickering's mangle of practice, and Actor Network Theory (ANT), the study provides an in-depth understanding about technology implementation practice. Analysis of an Enterprise System implementation project in a software manufacturing company reveals five stories of practice that relate to the major challenges faced. The story of mentoring related to the challenge of developing skilled analysts, and is examined by focusing on episodes about newly hired staff members. The story reveals the inhibiting impact of past habits and the role of occupational status. The second challenge related to the conflicts between IT and business. The story reveals the importance of visualization in relation to goal alignment and assembling efforts in user testing practices. The challenge of project managing is presented as a story about how the ambiguity of the project was negotiated. The story illustrates how a technology implementation project involves a project team's bricoleur-like skills, which include leveraging the symbolic, political, and infomercial aspects of meetings. The challenge about how project participants were attempting to gain and sustain knowledge about the project is presented as a story of remembering. The story reveals the project members' efforts to develop a working project memory through collective remembering. Finally, the challenge about the difficulties in decision making for globally distributed project participants is presented as a story of scenario-sharing. The story illustrates how design decision-making involved imagination practice among project participants supported by a material object. In the discussion, the four chosen practice theories' contributions, weaknesses and strengths are considered. An integrative view of these theories is proposed and later this is extended by incorporating some new findings regarding agency, emergence, and assemblages. The study contributes to research in terms of project management, stakeholder and end-user perspectives, and knowledge management. The study contributes to managerial practice by helping practitioners understand how the so-called critical success factors (CSFs) are actually practiced to facilitate ES implementation.
Recommended Citation
Awazu, Yukika, "Practicing Technology Implementation: The Case of An Enterprise System". 2013. 10.
https://scholars.bentley.edu/etd_2013/10
Included in
Business Administration, Management, and Operations Commons, Organization Development Commons, Technology and Innovation Commons