Global Information System Implementation: A Study of Strategic and Cultural Challenges and Enablers in a DMNC

• Date: 01 September 2015
• Author: Glenn Parry,Roan De Bock,Gareth R.T. White
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/jsc.2021
• Published date: 01 September 2015

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Strat. Change 24: 447–462 (2015)

Published online in Wiley Online Library

(wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/jsc.2021

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Strategic Change: Briengs in Entrepreneurial Finance

Strategic Change

DOI: 10.1002/jsc.2021

Global Information System Implementation:

A Study of Strategic and Cultural Challenges

and Enablers in a DMNC1

Glenn Parry

Faculty of Business & Law, University of the West of England, UK

Roan De Bock

University of Bath, UK

Gareth R.T. White

Faculty of Business and Society, University of Wales, UK

The factors mentioned most frequently by the information system implementation

teams as being critical to success were all issues pertaining to cultural rather than

strategic management.

During the last few decades, globalization and the electronic integration of process

information have dominated the world of business (Lehmann and Gallupe, 2005).

Information technology (IT) continues to be a source of considerable competitive

advantage for many companies (Zhang and Lado, 2001; Jones et al., 2003;

Chenand Tsou, 2007; Chaey and White, 2010). Tens of thousands of organiza-

tions representing millions of users access enterprise resource planning (ERP)

systems (Girard, 2000). An ERP system can be dened as ‘an information system

that enables the integration of transaction‐based data and business processes

within and across functional areas in an organisation’ (Parry and Graves, 2007,

p.1). us, ERP systems are enterprise‐wide packages that enable companies to

integrate business functions into a single software system with a shared database

that is accessible through a unied interface (Lee and Lee, 2000). ERP systems

automate core corporate activities, such as supply chain management, manufactur-

ing scheduling, inventory control, and the management of nancial and human

resources, while eliminating complex, expensive links between systems and busi-

ness functions (Sedera et al., 2003).

Despite their strategic importance to organizations, information system imple-

mentations continue to fail due to a wide variety of issues including budget

and schedule overruns, failing to meet user requirements, and the inuence of

1 JEL classication codes: D21, D83, M21, Z10.

A model for success in global

information system

implementation provides guidance

for strategic and cultural

challenges and enablers.

Strategic success is linked to

tensions in structure, process, and

power whilst cultural success is

linked to the affective, cognitive,

and communicative dimensions.

The success of a global

information system

implementation process appears

to be more closely linked to

cultural rather than strategic

management factors.

448 Glenn Parry, Roan De Bock, and Gareth R.T. White

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Strategic Change

DOI: 10.1002/jsc

organizational changes (Winklhofer, 2002; Yeo, 2002;

Siau and Tan, 2005). Poor IS capability has also featured

as a key contributor of asymmetric strategy implementa-

tion (Deasy et al., 2014). ERP implementations have

proved particularly dicult, with failure rates estimated

at between 20% and 50%, costs running into millions of

dollars, and system implementation even attributed as a

major factor in bankrupting one business, making imple-

mentation of great interest to managers and academics

(Yourdon, 1997; Collins and Kirsch, 1999; Chen, 2001;

e Standish Group, 2002).

Information system (IS) development research has

tended to focus on methodological development and only

relatively recently have the human aspects of leadership,

user behavior, and reward systems been explored (Walsh

and Schneider, 2002; Fidel and Pejtersen, 2004; Faraj and

Sambamurthy, 2006; Mahaney and Lederer, 2006; Mattia

and Weistroer, 2008). Studies of IT implementation

have mainly either focused locally on a single business or

have involved surveys that capture data from numerous

companies and have tended to concentrate on either the

challenges in the technology or on business process

re‐engineering (Wood and Caldas, 2001). e fusion of

cultural and strategic challenges inherent in the imple-

mentation of systems across global operations remains

under‐researched.

is study explores the implementation of an ERP

subsystem in a large, global organization operating across

Europe, Asia, and America. It seeks to make a contribu-

tion by examining the strategic and cultural challenges,

and associated enabling factors, related to the successful

implementation of the human resource information

system (HRIS) across the organization. e study fol-

lowed the implementation of the HRIS across Canada,

Germany, the UK, and the USA, presenting a chronologi-

cal perspective as the global system was ‘rolled out’ around

the world.

A single‐case organization with multinational context

provides a limit to variation caused by studying dierent

rms and provides insight into the cultural challenges that

face large‐scale IS implementations. e business units

across which the implementation was studied exhibit a

high degree of strategic autonomy. e HRIS embodies

a complex nexus of personal, nancial, and legal data

that is used for operational and strategic planning and

decision‐making, at both the level of the individual busi-

ness unit and at the corporate level. It also integrates with

external bodies such as recruitment agencies, individuals,

and legal organizations. e HRIS can therefore be con-

ceptualized as a horizontally and vertically distributed

informatic supply chain, connecting internal and exter-

nal functions. Consequently, it provided an opportunity

to study the diculties that are experienced in system

implementations that occur across organizations of dis-

parate nature.

To explore this area a model was created that inte-

grated the strategic and cultural challenge that may face

those companies attempting global implementation of

information systems. e strategic and cultural elements

that were used to construct the model were derived from

an extensive literature review. e model proposed was

used as a guide for qualitative interviews exploring and

capturing the rm’s experiences with the globalization of

the HRIS.

The challenge of HRIS and GIS

An important module of an enterprise‐wide centralized

database is the HRIS, an increasingly signicant function

of ERP (Ball, 2001; Alshawi et al., 2004). e main

purpose of any HRIS is to provide managers with high‐

quality information about their human resources (Hannon

et al., 1996). e HRIS is not only used for administrative

purposes, but also for strategic decision‐making (Ngai and

Wat, 2006). Ruël et al. (2007) dene the HRIS as a tech-

nology that operationalizes the organization’s strategic

intentions. Shrivastava and Shaw (2003) argue that the

HRIS redenes the scope of HR by enabling the HR

department to focus more on strategic activities as they

may play a key role in change activity. HR managers may