The dissertation provides a rich analysis of routines in four case-study companies. Explanations for the behaviour of the firms are developed and provide new building blocks for the understanding of other firms in different circumstances, emphasising empirical evidence, rule-based action and recognising the historical, social and interpretive contexts. Routines are defined as established, significant, sanctioned and recurrent practices within organizations. A number of key features of organizations figure in the analysis: the relationship between structure and agency, the firm's culture and the firm's history. Structures are identified as rules and relationships. The analysis of agency focuses on the position of the agent, the agent's skill and the desire to reduce uncertainty. Technology is an important factor in the analysis. It is (partly) constitutive of the firms, that is it has the power to enact or establish the firms. It cannot do this on its own, it is argued, but, in interacting with other factors, has major implications for the structure and routine behaviour of the firms. The cases suggest that technology has implications for human agency which go beyond the initial intentions of the agents. Technology is not determining but interacts with the other factors in a recursive way and cannot be adequately analysed outside the social system of which it is a part. The primary contribution of the research is the development of a broader concept of routine, in particular, the identification of routine practices at a strategic level and the demonstration that such practices can incorporate change. In addition, the analysis identifies the role of technology in economic change. It adds to the understanding of routines more generally and confirms that an institutional approach to the understanding of firms' behaviour is fruitful and can add to the current repertoire of approaches in Economics.

This report represents the next step of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)related research at the Department of Information Business at the Vienna University of Economics and Business Adminstration following previous work on the selection process. Based on 209 datasets originating from a primary, national and industry independent survey, it provides a descriptive oriented overview of main characteristics of ERP in all stages of the system's lifecycle, emphasising differences between small-to-medium sized and large enterprises (SMEs and LEs). The given research topics in particular comprise software diffusion, resources allocated, strategic project guidance, investment drivers, considered and chosen solutions, team structures, selection criteria, information gathering, methodical support, implementation approaches, acompanying business strategies, implementation problems, perceived utilisation of ERP benefits, firm level ERP impact, and the role of ERP systems as technology enabler. Future work based on the gathered data will document analytical projects undertaken in particular focusing on ERP success, enterprise integration, organisational fit of ERP, and BPR/BPI related questions. / Series: Working Papers on Information Systems, Information Business and Operations

The aim of this research is to propose a sociotechnical framework to identify stakeholders involved in information systems and the benefit and barriers to the adoption of such systems. The proposed framework (BEBAF) would help to acknowledge the potential problematic areas for the implementation and adoption of information systems for each actor or social group and to be able to offer solutions based on the potential benefits for each of them. Precursors of BEBAF are social construction of technology (SCOT) and stakeholder identification process. Two case studies in the healthcare contexts, one in the UK and one in Spain, have been conducted in this dissertation using a qualitative approach to provide a rich picture of the influences on e-Health, and the users and organisational response to those influences. Both case studies aimed to support chronically ill patients at home or in nursing homes. BEBAF was then applied to both case studies. Among the most important implications are that those systems hold the promise for improving the quality of life of patients with chronic conditions, providing a better control over the disease. However, their impact on the organisational structures, the lack of funding and the difficulties of alignment of all the actors involved are relevant constraints to their adoption into the mainstream healthcare services. The main contributions of this thesis are: first, the definition and evaluation of a socio-technical framework to investigate IS adoption. Apart from the two closure mechanisms proposed by SCOT, BEBAF proposes a new closure mechanism by reinterpretation of benefits. In turn, the application of the framework has led to identify an extensive list of barriers and benefits for the adoption of e-Health systems with some suggested solutions. Another outcome is a comprehensive list of stakeholders involved in the adoption of such systems.

The Master thesis deals with the analyzing of the actual metodology of information system (thereinafter IS) implementation and the creation of a new more effective methodology that would prevent the repetition of the indentified deficiency. Despite the diversity of individual customers and their requests concerning the IS implementation and modification, it is necessary to apply the procedural approach during the generation of projects. The implementation methodolgy is thus defined by the description of the particular processes of IS implementation.

Social media such as Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, and online communities plays an important role for knowledge production and diffusion as well as discussions among people. Among social media, online brand communities (OBCs) have recently received attention from both academics and practitioners due to the practical benefits of OBCs for consumers and companies. For consumers, knowledge sharing and its collective activities help them to make purchase decisions and to protect themselves against firms’ monopoly and oligopoly or collusion and anticompetitive actions. For companies, new ideas and feedback on brand products created by OBC members are useful input to develop new products and enhance existing product lines. Therefore, active content generation by community members is one of the critical success factors of OBCs. However, many scholars argue that only a few members who are more devoted to a community are tending to engage in OBC activities and many community members tend to remain in the periphery (sometimes called ‘lurkers') of the community by using OBCs merely for gathering information without any contributions. Therefore, it is important to make members in the periphery of the community transit to the core to increase members’ intentions and ‘devoted members’ to produce more valuable benefits for both consumers and firms. In spite of its importance, the literature is lacking in efforts to explain how and when community members in the periphery transit to the core of the community in a long-term perspective. This study aims to reveal how and why OBC members transit from the periphery to the core of the community and how to increase their intention to use OBC from a long-term perspective. OBC use behaviour is classified into, largely, two categories according to the purposes of an OBC: behaviour with a brand product consumption purpose; and behaviour with a social relationship building purpose. This study classifies OBC members as three clusters by social identity theory: tourists, minglers, and devoted members (devotees and insiders). The devoted members have valuable consumption knowledge of brand and strong social bonds in the OBC and the OBC members become a devoted member by accumulated brand knowledge and experiences through long-term OBC use. Therefore, from a socialisation aspect, this study adopts organisational socialisation theory as the theoretical lens to explain how and why the members evolve from novice members as tourist to devoted members in OBC contexts. Socialisation theories argue that there are usually three sequential stages for a member to gain full membership in a community: pre-entry, accommodation, and affiliation. In addition, this study adopts IS implementation theory to understand OBC user behaviours from an IS use behaviour perspective: acceptance in the pre-entry stage and routinisation in the accommodation stage and infusion in the affiliation stage. By reviewing socialisation theory and IS implementation theory, this study finds four significant motivations, those of information quality, trust, sense of belonging, and brand loyalty for intention of OBC use from the acceptance (pre-entry) to infusion (affiliation) stages. To integrate the socialisation perspective with the IS use perspective, this study adopts a technology acceptance model (TAM) as a theoretical framework to link to motivators in different OBC use behaviour from the acceptance to infusion stages. As a result, this study proposes a conceptual framework to explain the OBC members’ transition process from acceptance (pre-entry) to infusion (affiliation). The aim of this study is to predict and explain the transition of motivators for OBC use from pre-entry to affiliation and how to improve members’ intention of OBC use from a long-term perspective ultimately to foster ‘devoted members’. This study adopts an online survey targeting 518 participants who belong to 17 OBCs in South Korea and the conceptual framework is validated. The results show that all factors (i.e. information quality, trust, sense of belonging, brand loyalty) are significant determinants to increase intention to use OBCs and the factors have a causal relationship with each other to form a transition process from the acceptance (pre-entry) to infusion (affiliation) stages. This study also reveals that brand loyalty has a significant role to explain the transition process and directly influence user intention to use OBCs. The sense of belonging also directly affects members’ intention to use OBCs but has less impact than brand loyalty. In addition, the results indicate that TAM is an appropriate model to predict user behaviours in a long-term perspective to explain the change of OBC use behaviour from the acceptance to infusion stage and confirms that perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use have significant impact on the intention to use OBCs as in other IS studies. Understanding the transition process within OBCs has theoretical and practical implications. Theoretically, it will extend our understanding of how IS end users transit from acceptance behaviour to continued use and extended use of information systems in virtual community contexts. For managers, this study will provide them with insight on how to retain potential consumers in OBCs and facilitate their activities to gain consumer feedback on existing and new products.

The use of medical information systems is now prevailing in the whole healthcare environment where the focus is on reducing clinical errors and supporting healthcare professionals in their routine tasks. Hospitals adopt medical information systems to facilitate their healthcare staff in providing efficient services to patients. Studies show that most of the time these systems cannot deliver according to their functional capacities due to certain implementation problems. In this research, we have indicated different implementation problems, their root causes and suggested proper approaches for solving these issues. In the textual analysis, we examined different technical, psychological and social problems that may arise during the implementation process. These theoretical findings have been validated through questionnaires and interviews with doctors, nurses, technicians and people involved in the development of medical information systems. The companies that are providing implementation services are also consulted to validate the theoretical facts. The results show that implementation problems are social and psychological rather than technical, so these problems should be solved with interpersonal, psychological and social skills. The focus of the implementation process should be on the social, psychological and technical effects to avoid any conflict. Reasonable user involvement in the decision making process, motivation and proper training reduces many implementation issues automatically. It is concluded from empirical results that development and implementation teams should have reasonable medical domain knowledge to diminish future implementation and maintenance hazards. The theoretical and empirical results show that data security issues are psychological as well as technical and should be dealt with by high priority.

This research addressed the need for in-depth investigation of what actually happens in the practice of risk management in software package implementation projects. There is strong 'official' sanction in the IT literature for the use of formal risk management processes for IT projects but there is a confused picture of their application in practice. While many potential risk factors for IT projects have been identified, and formal procedures have been prescribed for the management of these risks, there has been little work investigating how project managers assess these risks in practice and what countermeasures they employ against these risks in their projects. In particular, the study used an interpretive critical decision interview approach to focus on those areas of risk management knowledge that project managers have acquired through experience, i.e. tacit knowledge. A new categorization of risk factors emanating from three sources -- vendor, client, and third party -reveals risk factors not previously identified. Some of these new factors arise from the three sources noted, while others arise from the package implementation focus of the projects and from aspects arising from the location of the projects in Hong Kong. Key factors that cause problems even when anticipated and mitigated, and the most often unanticipated problems are also identified. The study further presents an examination of the studied managers' risk management practices, and the strategies they use to address both potential and actual problems. This examination revealed close conformance with recommended literature prescriptions at some stages of projects, and significant variation at other stages, with strategies applied being broad and general rather than risk specific. A useful categorization of these strategies into four broad groups relating to different sets of risk factors is presented, reflecting the actual practice of respondents. Tacit knowledge was revealed throughout these investigations in the variances observed between prescribed and actual practice, and particularly from an examination of project managers' decision-making practices from two different perspectives - rational and naturalistic. A hybrid decision-making model is proposed to capture the actual processes observed, and to provide prescriptive guidance for risk management practice. The investigation makes a contribution to the field of IT project risk management in three ways. First, the investigation has addressed the need for empirical studies into IT risk management practices and the factors influencing project managers in their choice and application of strategies to manage risk. Second, by examining how experienced IT project managers approach the task of managing risk in software package implementations, the study has extended our understanding of the nature of the knowledge and skills that effective IT project managers develop through experience. Third, the study makes a theoretical contribution to our understanding of IT project risk management by examining the decision-making processes followed by IT project managers from the perspective of two contrasting theories of decision-making - the rational method and the Naturalistic Decision Making theory.

In this thesis I have tried to identify if there exists a correlation between IT Governance Maturity (ITGM) and the success of an Information system implementation. The method chosen for this research was a Case study, performed at an IT-company, Medius AB in Linköping, Sweden. Six customers of Medius where selected, based on their successfulness project implementation, that the same project manager at Medius was involved and that their existed a comparable customer in the same industry for each customer selected. Out of the six customers selected for this thesis, two of them where from the retail industry, two from the manufacturing industry and two from the service industry. Their maturity level (according to SAMM) was determined using the framework suggested by Khaita & Zaulkernan (2009), by estimating each attribute from the interviews performed with the respondents. Each customers ITGM level was then compared to the degree of success of the implementation project of the Medius system. A correlation was found, between high ITGM and successful outcomes of the implementation project. The two attributes that seem to affect the outcome the most was: communication and knowledge sharing. These two attributes was also the ones least implementeted at the customers which unsuccesfully implemented the system. / I den här rapporten har jag tittat på hur ett IT-företags kunders IT-mognad påverkar utfallet av införandet av ett IT-system. Som underlag användes en fallstudie av företaget Medius AB och deras Linköpingskontor, där sex av deras kunder intervjuades och bedömdes i enlighet med SAMM. Fallföretaget i sig analyserades, med data från interna intervjuer och med stöd av en observation bedömdes deras IT-mognadsgrad enligt CSM. Målet var att undersöka huruvida IT-mognadsgraden hos en kund påverkar utfallet av ett införandeprojekt av ett IT-system. IT-systemet i fråga var ett elektroniskt arbetsflödessystem för faktura hantering, och för att eliminera risk användes bara projekt där samma projektledare varit ansvarig hos Medius AB. Två stycken kundföretag per bransch valdes ut, för branscherna utgjordes av: tillverkande, tjänste och detaljhandel. En bransch stack ut i studien, där detaljhandelns två företag i rapporten var de som visade sig ha högst mognadsvärde enligt SAMM. Vidare kunde jag konstatera att det finns en tydlig koppling mellan de med hög mognadsgrad och lyckade projektutfall. De två faktorer som verkade påverka utfallet främst, var effektiv intern kommunikation och förmågan att överföra kunskap. De två projekt som helt hade misslyckats införa bra rutiner för dessa, var också de som lyckats dåligt med att införa produkten under det givna projektet.

This thesis deals with credit collection information system design and implementation. The thesis consists of three parts. The first part looks into invoice administration, credit collection, and trends of dedicated information systems. The second part analyzes a solution currently supporting credit collection processes in a selected consulting company. The last part contains a design and an implementation of a new solution for this company. The main out-come of this thesis is to create an easily extensible credit collection solution.

The reason for the study is that IT-enabled organizational change processes such as information system implementations have high costs and disappointing results. Studies to identify causes of the mentioned failures are mainly based on a variance approach. This study applies another approach which is not yet performed in this field of research and affects several themes. Based on a process approach data is compared with ideal-process theories to identify the generative mechanisms causing the unfolding of the process. Thus, the study identifies a recipe and not the ingredients.