Toward a Methodology for Managing Information Systems Implementation: A Social Constructivist Perspective

Introduction And Review of the Implementation Literature Implementation of information systems has been a topic of considerable interest to practitioners as well as academic researchers for over two decades. In a broad sense, implementation refers to all that must be done by a specific organization for it to be able to harness the capabilities of a particular information technology as envisioned. A number of prominent operations research/management science (OR/MS) and information systems (IS) researchers have recognized that behavioral issues rather than technological issues seem to be at the root of problems related to implementation (Schultz and Slevin, 1975; Ginzberg, 1978; Lyytinen and Hirschheim, 1987; etc.). Consequently, much of the research on implementation in the fields of OR/MS and IS has focused on the related human aspects. Different scholars have tried to address the problem of implementation in different ways, thus deriving different insights and prescriptions for successful implementation. Among the first to analyze implementation were Churchman and Schainblatt (1965), who viewed implementation as "the problem of determining what activities of the scientist and the manager are most appropriate to bring about an effective relationship between the two". They recommended a relationship of "mutual understanding" between that scientist (i.e., the IS professional) and the manager (i.e., the user) wherein each would come to understand the other through a dialectical process (see Figure 1a). While Churchman and Schainblatt's approach was a novel and useful way of framing implementation, it had at least three serious limitations: first, the approach completely ignored the system (technology) that was to be implemented; second, it provided almost no guidance on how to achieve the state of mutual understanding; and third, the approach did not incorporate the fact that "scientists" and "managers" do not (and cannot) operate isolated from the context of implementation. The next wave of research (Lucas, 1975; Schultz, Ginzberg and Lucas, 1984; DeSanctis, 1984; Leonard-Barton, 1988) thus focused on identifying a broad range of factors that affect implementation outcome (see Figure 1b). Factors identified are classified as: * individual variables such as needs, cognitive style, personality, demographics, decision-style, and expectancy contributions; * organizational variables such as differentiation/ integration, extent of centralization, autonomy of unit, culture, group norms, reward systems, and power distributions; * situational variables such as user involvement, nature of analyst-user communication, organizational validity, and the existence of critical mass; and * technological variables which include the type of technology (MIS, TPS, CASE tools, EMS, etc.), and characteristics of technology such as transferability, implementation complexity, divisibility, and cultural content. [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] As scholars started understanding the role of different factors, they came to the realization that implementation was not a static phenomenon as implicitly assumed by those conducting factors research, and that implementation would be better understood as a process mediated by certain conditions such as project management, presence of a champion and top management support (see Figure 1c). While some scholars adopting the "process view" saw implementation as diffusion of innovation, most viewed it as a process of changing the institutionalized way of doing things within an organization (Ginzberg, 1978; Galbraith, 1979), and thus, existing process models of organization change (e.g. Lewin/Schein model, Kolb/Frohman model) were often used to conceptualize the implementation of information systems. The process view of implementation was further developed by scholars influenced by the "socio-technical" school of thought (e.g., Bostrom and Heinen, 1977; Markus, 1983; Robey, 1987), and this "interactionist" approach arguably remains the dominant one for the study of implementation of IS in organizations (see Figure 1d). …