<p> Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementations are expensive, time-consuming, and often do not lead to the expected outcome of integrated IT systems. Many German universities are implementing ERP systems as Campus Management Systems (CMS) and a solution to any problem, need, or requirement the organization has. This exploratory case study describes cases of CMS implementations in administrative departments in German universities. Thirteen non-managerial staff members in the registrar offices of two universities shared their experiences about critical factors during and after a CMS implementation. The interview questions focused on (a) implementation experiences, (b) implementation leadership, and (c) impact on daily work processes. The interviews were held, transcribed, and analyzed in German. The inductive analysis of the interviews revealed three main themes: (a) communication, (b) system customization, and (c) team composition and resources. The predominant subject in the theme communication was lack of internal and external communication regarding the CMS project. The overarching system customization theme was the complexity of administrative requirements and continuous and rapid adaptation needs requiring increased CMS team support. The focus of the team composition and resources theme was to employ knowledgeable employees thorough and beyond the end of the project to react to changing requirements. These themes are concurrent with previous research but are unique in that previous research did not focus on CMS in Germany. The themes differ because sub-categories are stakeholder group specific and highlight CMS implementation phase dependencies.</p><p> Keywords: Enterprise resource planning systems, Higher Education, success and risk factors, Germany</p>

In recent years, the impact of global forces such as the increasing pace of technological innovation and the growing affluence of emerging economies has changed the role of Information Technology (IT). New sourcing models and increasing competitive pressure have had a significant effect on the way technologies are delivered and subsequently the role of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) has gradually been migrating from one of a support role to that of playing a crucial part in the execution of corporate strategies. Whilst previous academic studies appear to be focused on the different competencies of the CIO, there have been few studies concerning how CIOs perceive their role and their future. Drawing on the various concepts from role theory, this PhD thesis constitutes the first known study aimed at presenting the role demands, constraints and the choices as perceived by the CIOs. Using a qualitative approach, 25 semi-structured interviews were conducted with both CIOs and senior IT leaders. Empirical evidence highlights the critical importance of role choices in determining what type of CIO an individual will be. It has also enabled the development of two new CIO role models; the Abeyant CIO and the Transmuted CIO. The Abeyant CIO model has been established to help understand the role enactment of CIOs who have not yet made the transition from a manager to a leader. In this scenario, it is asserted that individuals are the recipient of a role that was formulated by the role set, and that this ultimately determines the level of demands and constraints within the individual’s environment. In contrast, the transmuted CIO scenario emphasises that individuals have been through a process of self-reflection and they have made conscious choices throughout their careers that have resulted in approaching the CIO role differently. It is theorised in the transmuted CIO scenario that individuals are not the mere recipient of role set expectations and that they are actively involved in role making.

<p> Today's information technology (IT) professional must go beyond their technical ability and obtain new leadership skills. Simultaneously obtaining business acumen, developing successful IT-business relationships, communicating effectively, and still being technical makes being an IT professional more challenging than ever. It is the viewpoint of this researcher that self-awareness is the foundational level skill set needed to foster the insights needed to adopt and apply these skills to increase success in the IT professional. Previous research has examined the relationship of self-awareness and it's impact on leadership effectiveness and even explores correlations with emotional intelligence and IT organizations success. However, gaps remain in the literature to the specific correlations of the value and perception of self-awareness within the IT professional, and what specific role self-awareness plays in IT professionals' success. The purpose of this research was to understand and quantify how IT professionals perceive the meaning of the word self-awareness, and the connection between self-awareness and increased effectiveness. A comprehensive survey was conducted with 164 IT and business professionals of different levels, different size organizations and different industries to formalize quantitative answers to these questions. Follow-up interviews were also conducted to gain further clarification of survey results. The results reveal that self-awareness was viewed positively and critical to the success of the IT professional regardless of gender, role, educational level or years in the industry. The data also showed that if more investment in self-awareness training where to incur, the importance of that skill would increase, and the importance of technical skills would decrease; provided they had an external influence ("sponsor") that provided feedback to invest in such skills. They had to have their awareness raised, to raise their awareness, and this effort had to be intentional. Self-awareness had direct positive correlations to improved relationship management. Study limitations and implications to the organization development field are also discussed.</p>

<p> Organizations spend billions of dollars on information and data security, and most of this expenditure is directed externally; however, there is ample evidence in the literature that employees account for most security breaches. For information security (IS) measures to work, employees need to adopt the organization&rsquo;s information system security measures. To understand employees&rsquo; adoption of security systems in the manufacturing industry in the US, this empirical study tested the extended Technology Acceptance model and Theory of Planned behavior in relation to employees&rsquo; perceptions of the IS measures usefulness, ease of use, and subjective norms and how these perceptions predicted their intention to use the security measures. Additionally, under investigation was whether age and employees&rsquo; perception of managerial support moderated the aforementioned perceptions to affect employees&rsquo; intention to use the security measures. Results of a standard multiple regression and a hierarchical regression indicated that the TAM and the TBP explained variances in the DV; however, contrary to extant literature, employees&rsquo; perceived usefulness of IS measures did not statistically significantly predict their intention to use IS measures. Implications of these findings are discussed, as well as recommendations for future research.</p>

<p> According to Markus's theory of reuse, when digital repositories are deployed to collect and distribute organizational assets, they supposedly help ensure accountability, extend information exchange, and improve productivity. Such repositories require a large investment due to the continuing costs of hardware, software, user licenses, training, and technical support. The problem addressed in this study was the lack of evidence in the literature on whether users in fact reused enough digital assets in repositories to justify the investment. The objective of the study was to investigate the organizational value of repositories to better inform architectural, construction, software and other industries whether repositories are worth the investment. This study was designed to examine asset reuse of medical images at a health information publisher. The research question focused on the amount of asset reuse over time, which was determined from existing repository transaction logs generated over an 8-year period by all users. A longitudinal census data analysis of archival research was performed on the entire dataset of 85,250 transaction logs. The results showed that 42 users downloaded those assets, including 11,059 images, indicating that the repository was used by sufficient users at this publisher of about 80 employees. From those images, 1,443 medical images were reused for new product development, showing a minimal asset reuse rate of 13%. Assistants (42%), writers (20%), and librarians (16%) were the primary users of this repository. Collectively, these results demonstrated the value of repositories in improving organizational productivity&mdash;through reuse of existing digital assets such as medical images to avoid unnecessary duplication costs&mdash;for social change and economic transformation.</p>

<p> The worldwide software project failure rate, based on a survey of information technology software manager's view of user satisfaction, product quality, and staff productivity, is estimated to be between 24% and 36% and software project success has not kept pace with the advances in hardware. The problem addressed by this study was the limited information about software managers' experiences with data-driven decision making (DDD) in agile software organizations as a tool to improve software development productivity. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore how agile software managers view DDD as a tool to improve software development productivity and to understand how agile software development organizations may use DDD now and in the future to improve software development productivity. Research questions asked about software managers', project managers', and agile coaches' lived experiences with DDD via a set of interview questions. The conceptual framework for the research was based on the 3 critical dimensions of software organization productivity improvement: people, process, and tools, which were defined by the Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model Integrated published in 2010. Organizations focus on processes to align the people, procedures and methods, and tools and equipment to improve productivity. Positive social change could result from a better understanding of DDD in an agile software development environment; this increased understanding of DDD could enable organizations to create more products, offer more jobs, and better compete in a global economy.</p>

<p> This quantitative correlational research explored the potential association between the levels of organizational trust and the software testing estimation. This was conducted by exploring the relationships between organizational trust, tester&rsquo;s expertise, organizational technology used, and the number of hours, number of testers, and time-coding estimated by the software testers. The research conducted on a software testing department of a health insurance organization, employed the use of the Organizational Trust Inventory- Short Form (OTI-SF) developed by Philip Bromiley and Larry Cummings and revealed a strong relationship between organizational trust and software testing estimation. The research reviews historical theories of organizational trust and include a deep discussion about software testing practices and software testing estimation. By examining the significant impact of organizational trust on project estimating and time-coding in this research, software testing leaders can benefit from this research to improve project planning and managing process by improving the levels of trust within their organizations.</p>

Both total quality management (TQM) and the use of information technology (IT) have been widely researched over recent years. However, there has been no well-founded empirical research on the two together - on how IT can support TQM practices. A scarcity of empirical studies on the role of IT in TQM, especially in the non-manufacturing sector, which can illustrate the importance or otherwise of IT for TQM, has prompted this study. Thus the study sought to provide such an empirical base. This study investigated the extent to which IT has been used to support TQM among selected Malaysian public agencies. It also identified the external, organisational and technological factors that may influence the use of IT in TQM. A framework based on the literature of TQM has been derived and used as the conceptual base for the creation of a questionnaire to determine the use of IT in TQM. The questionnaire was sent to 110 Malaysian public agencies that have implemented TQM. The results presented were based on the responses from 47 agencies. The study reveals that IT is helpful for implementing TQM but its usage varies across the nine aspects of TQM processes. 'Important Innovations' exhibits the highest level of IT usage followed closely by 'Information and Analysis'. 'Supplier Quality Assurance', on the other hand, shows the lowest level of IT usage. Regression analysis showed that four independent variables have a significant effect on the use of IT. They are IT experience, top management support, public accountability and IT structure (in order of importance). The responding agencies were then classified into three distinctive IT-usage groups (i. e. low, moderate, and high) according to their IT-usage level. Contextual influences (external, organisational and technological) were then explored using regression analysis. The results revealed that when the IT-usage level is high, technological factors play an important role. However, when the usage level is low, organisational factors become more influential. For the moderate group, both technological and organisational factors affect the usage level.

<p> Organizations that depend on the use of IT in their business models must maintain their systems and keep their systems current to survive (Filipek, 2008; Kulkarni, Kumar, Mookerjee, &amp; Sethi, 2009; Unterkalmsteiner et al., 2012). As most IT departments allocate as much as 80% of their budget to maintain stability while leaving only the other 20% to allow improvements (Telea et al., 2010), high cost of stability may be a reason many IT organizations cannot afford efficient staffing and even jeopardize the existence of the organization (Filipek, 2008; Talib, Abdullah, Atan, &amp; Murad, 2010). The purpose of this exploratory mixed methods study was to discover the IT programming standards used in IT departments that predict a decrease in project maintenance costs. This study employed an exploratory mixed methods data collection and analysis to develop and test a collection of universal programming standards. The qualitative portion of the study resulted in a list of IT programming standards from the Fortune 20 companies of 2011. Surveyed from IT departments in the Fortune 500 companies of 2011, the quantitative portion of this study correlate the degree of enforcement of each IT programming standard to a decrease in average project maintenance costs using a backward stepwise regression. Using a 95% confidence interval and a 5% margin of error (&alpha; = .05), the backward stepwise regression discarded 18 of the 22 IT programming standards. The remaining correlations give evidence that a) the more the department enforces waiting for feedback the higher the maintenance costs, b) the more the department enforces having the architectural team develop coding guidelines the lower the maintenance costs, and c) the more the IT department enforces the following of change management procedures, the higher the maintenance costs.</p>

Thesis (MPhil) -- Auckland University of Technology, 2004. / Also held in print (115 leaves, 30 cm.) in Wellesley Theses Collection (T 658.4038011 HIL)