This research aims to investigate the partnering strategies in Application Service Provision (ASP) from a vendor's perspective. Although some attention was recently given to the ASP model, the main focus of the published academic work was essentially on the customer's side. This research focuses on ASP vendors, and aims at studying the partnering strategies used by these in order to source the different ASP model components. From the studied literature, it was found that the ASP model relies on 4 main infrastructural layers for delivering services: the data storage layer, the server layer, the network layer, and the application layer. Due to the different nature of each of these layers in terms of the required technology, it was concluded that ASP is a complex service, for which the required resources and capabilities are unlikely to be owned by one single company, thus the importance of studying the partnering strategies needed for ASP vendors. Through the use of Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) and the Resource-based View (RBV), predictions were made about the expected sourcing modes (market, integration, or strategic alliance) for each of the ASP layers. The next phase was to study six ASP cases, in which the partnering strategies of each firm for each ASP layer were studied. The main result from this analysis was that the actual outcomes from the case studies did not fully match the predictions that were initially made. A cross-case analysis was then undertaken by reapplying TCE and RBV to the studied cases. In this phase, for each ASP layer in each case study TCE and RBV attributes were investigated, and the drawn conclusions were two fold. First, the initial assumption that the software layer is the core layer of the model, based on which the predictions were made, was rather flawed; it was found that although many ASP vendors draw value from the application layer, several others rely on other ASP layers. Secondly, it was concluded that the two used theories - TCE and R-BV - did not, independently, explain all the actual sourcing modes of the studied ASP vendors, though RBV showed more explanatory power than TCE. Furthermore, it was demonstrated that the combination of TCE and RBV, in the context of this study, offers more explanatory power than if the two theories were used independently. Although this is an important finding in the context of ASP, the implications on IS research is tremendous, where multiple-theory applications are increasingly called for.

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The continuing occurrence of information systems development (ISD) failure persists as a strong motivator for both industrial and academic research to identify factors and develop methodologies which are more likely to lead to ISD project success. While good technical design is fundamental to the successful implementation of information systems, it is well understood that social and behavioural factors also have an important impact on the design and development process. It is proposed here that values held by individuals - enduring beliefs about what is worthwhile that influence behaviour - are important in relation to the chances of success for corporate ISD projects. It is further proposed that values implicitly determine the underlying philosophy of corporate approaches to ISD and also inform definitions of success. However, it is also recognised that greater specificity is required to more clearly understand the impact of these factors on ISD projects. Obtaining a clearer understanding of this should lead to greater success in developing methodologies or approaches which recognise and utilise values in the processes involved in the development of information systems. This research has addressed the need to provide greater specificity of these factors by investigating the process of systems development as undertaken in a large financial institution. The approach employed was exploratory and descriptive, including techniques such as survey, interviews and observation to examine the impact of personal and corporate values in ISD projects. The results of the investigation are based on an interpretive case study of a team of systems developers who were using a traditional structured systems methodology to help analyse and design the merging of a standalone database with a corporate information system. The research has employed a qualitative approach, using the interpretive skills of the researcher to provide the essential detailed descriptions and explanations of how social and behavioural factors affected the project at the micro-level. The significance of the contribution of this research is the level of detailed explanation it provides about the impact that the social, economic, political and theoretical values of individuals have on an ISD project taking place within a corporate setting. In particular, it demonstrates the significance of the role of the IT project manager in relation to managing the interface between the competing demands of corporate, personal and project team values and highlights the importance of social values in doing this. The thesis proposes that by paying greater regard to social values, for example altruism, which engenders trust and honesty, the project manager will ensure greater congruence between corporate and personal values, thus creating favourable conditions for project success.

Enterprises are organisations with multiple business processes; they often use Enterprise Information Systems (EIS) to support these business processes. The concept of an EIS has arisen from the need to deal with the increasingly volatile requirements of modern large{scale organisations. EIS are growing in use and are now being used to support government, health care, and non-profit / non-governmental organisations. The development of EIS has been affected significantly by the complexity and size of enterprises and their business processes, in addition to the influences of economical, social, and governmental factors. There are many challenges associated with building EIS. Three critical ones identied in the literature are: adequately satisfying organisational requirements; building valid and stakeholder-acceptable business processes; and providing repeatable and rigorous approaches to establish shared understanding of EIS goals. These challenges are difficult to cope with because of the need to deal with different goals, changes in goals, and the problem of how to transform these goals into system requirements and, ultimately, to an EIS architecture. This thesis contributes a rigorous approach for identifying and describing the enterprise-level requirements of IT developers, managers, and other stakeholders of an enterprise. The approach provides two modelling and tool-supported processes to help establish a rigorous model of EIS goals. It also provides support for transforming goals to a strategic EIS architecture. The approach presented in the thesis is based on the concepts of Goal-oriented software engineering. The thesis presents a novel Process Model, KAOS-B that extends goal-oriented software engineering approaches with new concepts and techniques for EIS. Further, to support the transition from requirements to an EIS architecture, an EIS Architecture Process Model (EAPM), is designed and evaluated. Using KAOS-B and EAPM in concert provides a rigorous, repeatable and tool-supported approach for analysing, and designing a strategic EIS architecture. The thesis illustrates the approach with two substantial examples from the health informatics and critical systems domain.

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This research explores two separate but related lines of enquiry - the business value of individual applications and the social and organisational impact of information systems. From this research it is clear that information systems have immense potential to change organisations. The conventional view focuses on the value that organisations can obtain through greater efficiency or new activities made possible by specific applications. But experience suggests that many organisations fail to gain the value expected. This research was started with the aim of attaining a greater understanding of the business value that information systems could offer organisations and finding ways by which organisations could assess and realise this value. The research has adopted a variety of methodological approaches and this integrating paper assesses the choices made and locates the papersin relation to the literature on information systems research methodology. The nine research papers taken together demonstrate that is business value is a complex concept and difficult to measure in practice. The research finds that the business and organisational environments are key factors in achieving the business value to be reaped from the range of benefits that each type of IS application offers. The research also demonstrates why IS evaluation practice continues to pose problems for researchers and practitioners. This integrating paper situates the work within the relevant literature on information systems research, assesses the contribution of the research papers to information systems research and concludes with a discussion of future research that flows from this work.