Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to discuss the structural design of customer teams (CuTes) working with external teams to implement customized information systems (IS). Design consists of ...theoretically based measures and a first set of real-world, empirical values.
Design/methodology/approach
– A search in the organizational literature suggested that the adhocracy is the preferred structure for CuTes. Adhocracy-like measures were then developed and applied to a high-performance CuTe to reveal a first benchmark for a team’s adhocratic design.
Findings
– High-performance CuTes do not necessarily implement the adhocratic principles to the highest degree.
Research limitations/implications
– It is still open whether all the structural measures described here are necessary and sufficient to describe the adhocracy-like structural design of CuTes.
Practical implications
– The CuTe is highlighted as the key incumbent of cooperation with the technology supplier and consultants in terms of project authority and responsibility. A psychometric instrument and real-world values are proposed as a reference for the structural design of high-performance CuTes.
Social implications
– The performance of IS projects is a social concern, since IS products should be aimed at serving people better both inside and outside the organization. Professionals who work in CuTes to develop better IS should receive institutional recognition and management attention.
Originality/value
– This study seems to be the first to discuss the structure of CuTes in customized IS projects from a theoretical and applied perspective.
This article introduces measures to improve theoretical knowledge and managerial practice about the participation of teams in customized information systems software (CISS) projects. The focus is on ...people traits of the customer team (CuTe), that is, professionals from the client organization that contracts CISS projects who assume specific business and information technology roles in partnerships with external developers, given that both in-house and outsourced teams share project authority and responsibility. A systematic literature review based on a particular perspective of the socio-technical approach to the work systems enabled the compilation of measures that account for people traits assumed to improve CuTe performance. The resulting framework contributes to a much needed theory on the management of knowledge workers, especially to help plan, control, assess, and make historical records of CuTe design and performance in CISS projects.
Organizations in an (Anti-)Information Age Bellini, Carlo Gabriel Porto; Shah, Vishal
BAR, Brazilian administration review,
07/2018, Letnik:
15, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The Internet is a powerful means for people to share information freely and reliably. This is possible due to the Internet's technological infrastructure, governance principles, global reach, and Web ...2.0 features that enable on-the-scene, real-time, user-generated content1. However, some governments around the world have been censoring online content or building their own regional Internet infrastructure in order to manipulate information, create particular visions of the information world, and ultimately dominate their people (Naím & Bennett, 2015). Governments may also reframe available online information into useful information for their own intents. While governments challenge the world of free information in a systematic fashion and with long-term intents, certain individuals also act alone or in groups to manipulate information with short-term goals based on incidental motivations and convenient opportunities. Interestingly, such opportunities emerge in regions where governments do not censor the flow of information in cyberspace, that is, where information democracy is the norm.
The METRICS framework was developed during a landmark enterprise-wide system implementation in a Brazilian university. It was designed as a tool for managing the social subsystem (cognition, ...behavior, and structure) of customer teams as they work with external technology and business teams. Our research draws on METRICS to verify the stability of cognitive, behavioral, and structural attributes that are expected to impact the performance of customer teams in projects. We compare two studies developed in different periods, with different methods, theories, projects, and types of teams, and in different geographical, cultural, and economic regions of Brazil-the south and the northeast. Data collection and analysis were based on personal constructs theory and the repertory grid technique applied to select information technology professionals from external teams (that worked with customer teams) in the northeast. With 77.3% (68/88) of the original measures verified empirically, the framework was considered stable across multiple settings. Given that enterprise-wide system implementation usually involves global technology vendors, and since Brazil is an illustrative case of Latin America and the developing world, our research contributes with insights into the social aspects of customer teams that impact project performance.
PDF
