Work in organizations is becoming increasingly focused on collaborative work in groups. Groupware is widely touted as the information technology that can support this new mode of work by fostering collaboration. In a study of Lotus Notes, a popular groupware product, implemented throughout the professional staff of a large American insurance company, we found the impact of groupware to be somewhat different from certain common expectations. While almost everyone was quite pleased with the Notes, implementation and its perceived impact, there was no evidence of a change in the degree of collaboration among organization members. Two key themes are explored as possible explanations for this result: fit of the technology to the organization, and limited training in how best to use this new technology.
This article presents a model of the implementation process for dedicated packages and describes a research project to test the model undertaken with the cooperation of a major computer vendor. Data were collected from 78 individuals in 18 firms using the package and from the package vendor. The results of the study offer some support for the model, along with suggestions for package implementation for both the customer and package vendor. The purpose of this article is to describe a study of the implementation process for a packaged system, called Production System (PS). A major computer vendor designed and programmed PS and offers it to its customers. PS consists of multiple, integrated modules, with each module dedicated to a different aspect of the manufacturing process. Customers can order all or parts of the package for installation on the vendor's computers.
Previous analyses of the MIS implementation process have focused on the conduct of individual process stages as explanatory of successful or unsuccessful implementation. Process stages, however, involve multiple issues, and it is unlikely that all issues are equally important for good performance at a stage. This article attempts to identify generic implementation issues -- those issues which arise at many process stages. An empirical analysis identified six such issues, and suggested that three of them were quite important for differentiating between successful and unsuccessful MIS implementations.