Institutional Bridging: How Conceptions of IT-Enabled Change Shape the Planning Process.

Author List: Tillquist, John;
Journal of Management Information Systems, 2000, Volume 17, Issue 2, Page 115-152.
Organizations are continually influenced by notions of management promoted through broadly held visions of managerial practice. These notions often incorporate models that generally prescribe information technologies as enabling agents for directed organizational change. Such concepts reflect highly cohesive, self-referential systems of beliefs, goals, and rules that structure perspectives about computerization and work in organizations. To achieve "breakthrough" changes in efficiency, performance, or competitive advantage, organizations must translate these high concepts into a specific model of change appropriate for their organizational context. This study shows how abstract and institutional-level conceptions about change are translated into actionable and individual-level realities, and how within this translation the organization's ability to reform can be locked into a constraining process. As consultants bridge institutionalized conceptions of management to discrete organizational activities, participants of change adopt not only the vision of change but also new ways to talk, act, and plan. This adoption may inhibit change by blocking effective discussion and forcing compliance to ill-fitting prescriptions.
Keywords: business process reengineering; change methodologies; interpretivist field study; IT planning; IT-enabled organizational changes; organizational transformation
Algorithm:

List of Topics

#185 0.210 change organizational implementation case study changes management organizations technology organization analysis successful success equilibrium radical efforts initiatives managing resistance individuals
#24 0.138 institutional pressures logic theory normative embedded context incumbent contexts forces inertia institutionalized environment pressure identify mimetic dominant coupling board newly
#78 0.109 planning strategic process management plan operational implementation critical used tactical effectiveness number identified activities years effective developed issues empirical plans
#111 0.100 e-government collective sociomaterial material institutions actors practice particular organizational routines practices relations mindfulness different analysis ways draw agencies drawing ideas
#2 0.075 leadership leaders effective leader roles authority assume slow responsibility structure recognize responsibilities look size inevitable attain trend held articulate dominate
#59 0.073 capabilities capability firm firms performance resources business information technology firm's resource-based competitive it-enabled view study value infrastructure results organizational model
#237 0.053 boundary practices capacity new boundaries use practice absorptive organizational technology work field multiple study objects actors actor theory practical spanning
#210 0.052 innovation innovations innovative organizing technological vision disruptive crowdsourcing path implemented explain base opportunities study diversity taking actors practice shape creation