Editorial

Citation

Irani, Z. (2006), "Editorial", Journal of Enterprise Information Management, Vol. 19 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/jeim.2006.08819faa.001

Editorial

In “Knowledge sharing issues in the introduction of a new technology”, David Finnegan and Leslie Willcocks, of Warwick Business School, provide an exploratory case study research that applies a processual analysis to the implementation of a customer relationship management (CRM) system from a knowledge management perspective, to a contemporary issue within a city council. The study uses a qualitative, longitudinal, case study approach to collect and critically analyse empirical data. The variety of methods chosen to gather data (historical analysis, interviews, and taking of field notes) creates a useful form of triangulation and validates the data collected. While recent implementation studies provide a phased approach at a macro level, Finnegan and Willcocks investigate the process of implementation at a micro level and therefore, demonstrate the importance of underlying psychological contracts in sub-cultural interactions form a knowledge sharing perspective.

Continuing on the CRM thread, Malte Geibe, Lutz M. Kolbe and Walter Brenner of the University of St Gallen shed light on “CRM collaboration in financial services networks: a multi-case analysis”. Although CRM is already an established management concept within single companies, not many financial services companies’ networks have yet addressed the issue of inter-organisational relationship management. In this paper, the authors bridge the gap by researching this area and identify five key issues regarding the current CRM collaboration within financial services networks: that is redundant competencies in partnering companies, privacy constraints, CRM process integration, customer information exchange, and CRM systems integration. Based on a multi-case analysis of two successful implementations, the authors identify patterns of successful collaboration and offer practical recommendations to address the key issues.

The next contribution comes from Dieter Fink (Australia) and Georg Disterer (Germany). In their paper, “International case studies: to what extent is ICT infused into the operations of SMEs?” they discuss the use information communication technology (ICT) adoption is small businesses and its evolvement over time. The paper seeks to overcome previous limitations by examining both macro (industry, country) an micro (functions, enterprise) level phenomena within the use of ICT in small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The cases reported focus on Australia and Germany, which both support, recognise and promote small entrepreneurships. The study adopts an interpretive stance and employs qualitative case study method that enables the gathering data rich in details. Semi-structured, on site interviews were carried out in eight firms of various SME classifications. The study found that for micro-enterprises, ICT is only emerging in the form of systems that have the potential to facilitate interactions with the outside. Small enterprises effectively rely heavily on personal interactions, which they supplement with the use of ICT rather than ICT being at the core of their processes. In medium enterprises, ICT is further used in interactions, both internally and with the environments. Interestingly enough, the differences between Australian and German firms do not significantly affect the extent to which ICT is infused into observed SMEs.

Moving from CRM to enterprise resource planning (ERP), Siau Ching Lenny Koh with Mike Simpson, and Ye Lin of Sheffield University, UK detail “Uncertainty and contingency plans in ERP-controlled manufacturing environments”. In the paper, uncertainly and contingency plans are investigated in UK and Chinese organisations using MRP/MRPII/ERP systems. The authors’ research aims to determine to what extent uncertainties affected manufacturing enterprises’ delivery performance to analyse the performance of their contingency plans in dealing with uncertainties and to explore what technical and organisational factors affected managers’ decision to implement an uncertainty-diagnosing model. Overall, it was found that managers involved in this research believe that MRP/MRPII/ERP systems could improve manufacturing environments but they have limitations in dealing with uncertainties. Among the five types of uncertainty examined, material shortage was found to have the strongest impact on the performance of customer delivery. The findings portray that managers seem to have considered technical factors related to the model itself to be more important than organisational factors when implementing such an uncertainty-diagnosing model in ERP-controlled manufacturing environments. An interesting conclusion with potentially far reaching implications on organisations.

Managerial decision making in ERP implementations is also the topic of our next paper from Eastern Europe. Piotr Soja of the Cracow University of Economics in Poland writes on success factors in ERP systems implementations. His contribution reveals the mechanisms determining the success of ERP implementation on the basis of research conducted among practitioners dealing with ERP projects. The paper provides a collection of potential ERP implementation success factors and a taxonomy that orderly classifies them. The taxonomy is then contrasted against empirical data (field research and questionnaires). The analysis of the authors’ field study suggests that practitioners do not appreciate the significance of particular factors which have an important influence on project success, while others are overestimated. The findings illustrate the need for further research on the verification of success factors depending on the project type.

Following on, Reza Mohammady Garfamy examines the applicability of management accounting techniques, such as total cost of ownership (TCO), to be applied along other evaluation approaches. To this end, the paper proposes and demonstrates the application of data envelopment analysis (DEA) in evaluating the overall performance of supplies on multiple criteria bases on TCO concepts and simulated data in a hypothetical firm. The result of the study is that management accounting techniques should be used in a holistic and comprehensive way and complemented by other evaluation approaches in the supplier selection decision-support framework. The findings offer important theoretical and managerial implications and future research directions for purchasing as well as management accounting.

The last paper of this year closes the issue with a note on the levels of abstraction in human supervisory control teams. Neville Stanton et al. report on the levels of abstraction hierarchy (LOAH) in two energy distribution teams. The original proposition for the LOAH was that it depicted five levels of system representation, working from functional purpose through to physical form to determine the purpose of system function. The LOAH has been widely used throughout human supervisory control teams in semi-automated “intelligent” systems. A series of interviews were conducted in two energy distribution companies. The results of the study suggest that people in the teams are predominately operating at different levels of system representation, depending on their role. Managerial personnel work at functional purpose and abstract function levels whereas operation personnel work at physical function and physical form levels. The authors argue that both types of personnel are part of the wider distributed problem solving systems, which includes both people and technology.

This is a truly international issue with paper from around the global. The contributions published provide an overview of the themes, issues, and concerns surrounding enterprise information management systems. The explanatory nature of these papers will hopefully generate more in-depth research studies as ICT develops in the new years.

Zahir IraniEditor (zahir.irani@brunel.ac.uk)

Omiros D. SarikasEditorial Assistant