ABSTRACT
As we have already discussed, few large-scale information systems are, today, developed completely from scratch. Rather, most software applications are constructed by adapting and recycling existing packages to new organisational contexts and settings. Generic software packages, such as Enterprise Resource Planning systems, cover the fullest range of organisational activities and processes and are adopted with the aim of achieving substantial cost savings over bespoke solutions as well as improved access to ‘tried and tested’ solutions, new releases, and an opportunity to update procedures and align them with perceived ‘best practice’. However, while organisations choose packages because of their economic benefits, they are also a ‘site of struggle’ where there are various tensions between system suppliers and users as competing agendas are worked out, and where there are discrepancies between the universal logics of IT components and the specificity of user contexts. While suppliers aim to extend their solutions into as many different settings as possible, it has been pointed out these systems seldom translate easily across organisational and sectoral boundaries (Walsham 2001; Ciborra 2000). There is often a gulf between the system and the specific contexts, practices and requirements of particular user organisations. Some of the consequences for those wishing to capitalise on the benefits of
packages is that they often undergo unwanted organisational change in adapting their practices to the models of work and organisational process embedded in the software. These dilemmas are particularly acute with enterprise-wide solutions that seek new kinds of organisational flexibility and performance by capturing and integrating the full range of activities and transactions across an organisation. Despite a growing literature on the uptake of enterprise-wide systems, very little is known about how the gulf between standardised solutions and the specific contexts, practices and requirements of adopting organisations is reconciled between user and supplier organisations. In the first part of the chapter, we focus on what might be seen as an extreme example of the gulf, the application of ERP packages in universities. We discuss the various incommensurabilities that arise as a
system is rolled out and adapted for use in one particular institution (a university we are calling ‘Big Civic’). More generally, as concerns rise concerning the incommensurability of
systems and contexts, there are demands for solutions that are already partially adapted to particular business settings and for increased user-involvement in the shaping of packages. Alongside the adoption of these systems, then, there is an equally important story of innovation within supplier organisations and collaboration with package adopters as the technologies are adapted to these new contexts. In the second part, we analyse the development of new ERP functionality, a university-specific ERP module that we call ‘Campus’, which is being built to facilitate the take-up of ERP by higher education institutions. The module is being designed around the needs of Big Civic and a number of other ‘pilot sites’ around the world; and the eventual plan is to market Campus as a ‘global university product’.
