Editorial

Citation

Irani, Z. and Dwivedi, Y. (2012), "Editorial", Journal of Enterprise Information Management, Vol. 25 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/jeim.2012.08825eaa.001

Editorial

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Enterprise Information Management, Volume 25, Issue 5.

It gives us great pleasure to welcome our readers to the fifth issue of the 25th volume of Journal Enterprise Information Management (JEIM), and express our appreciation to them for their continuous support during the past year. The continuous update of the journal's scope to promote theory and practice has led to an increase in submissions that has allowed us to further the quality of the journal. This issue incorporate excellent “quality” submissions that focus on providing a mixture of conjectural and practical contributions.

The fifth issue of Volume 25 commences with a viewpoint by Muhammad Mustafa Kamal, entitled “Shared services: lessons from private sector for public sector domain”. In this viewpoint the author analyses the implementation of shared services models in business enterprises or private sector and the benefits realized. Thereafter, focusses on the lessons learnt from such operations and exploring the potential of applying similar models in the public sector. In this viewpoint, the author attempts to examine whether or not the concepts regarding shared service in private sector are valid and applicable in public sector. The author, however, argues that even though shared services concept and related models are significantly prevalent across the business enterprises or private sector and government sector, the author argues that shared services model developed in the private sector may further significantly facilitate governments and public agencies in dealing with the recent changes (i.e. due to global financial crisis) in their environments to become more effective and efficient. The author asserts that this paper brings together some of the key discussions from the business and private sector on shared services and discusses their applicability in the public sector context.

The above viewpoint is followed by a paper from Jaffar Ahmad Alalwan and Heinz Roland Weistroffer, entitled “Enterprise content management research: a comprehensive review”. The authors in this conceptual paper provide, first, a comprehensive literature review of ECM research, second, a conceptual framework of areas of concern regarding ECM, and finally, an agenda for future ECM research, based on the review and conceptual framework. However, to gain an understanding of the ECM literature, the authors adopted a structured research approach, consisting of two phases, i.e. first phase consists of identifying the relevant ECM research papers and second phase is the analysis phase, where the current ECM research is categorized based on three structural pillars: system component dimensions, system lifecycle and strategic managerial aspects. After reviewing and classifying 91 ECM publications, the authors identified that ECM involves several sophisticated and interacting technical, social, organizational and business aspects. The authors also state that the existing ECM literature can be grouped around three main pillars: The first pillar consists of the four ECM component dimensions (tools, strategy, process and people). The second pillar is the enterprise system lifecycle (adoption, acquisition, evolution and evaluation). The final pillar is the strategic managerial aspect (change management and management commitment). Based on the literature review and a proposed conceptual framework, the authors suggest an agenda for future research around the aforementioned three pillars. Despite the above, the authors assert that there is a lack of ECM meta-analysis research that explains the current state of the field. This paper; however, contributes to information systems research by describing and classifying the published literature in ECM and by pointing out the gaps where further research is most needed.

Then we have a research paper by Ondrej Zach and Bjørn Erik Munkvold, entitled “Identifying reasons for ERP system customization in SEMs: a multiple case study”. In this paper, the authors investigate the possible reasons for ERP system customization in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), with a particular focus on distinguishing influential factors of the SME context. In so doing, the authors employed an exploratory qualitative research approach, as the study aims to identify new insights within the SME context. A multiple case study of four SMEs was conducted. Through these four SMES, the authors collected data from 34 qualitative interviews with multiple informants. This paper reports on the overall findings from the four case organizations where ERP customization has been applied to match organizational needs. First, the level and type of ERP system customization applied by the case organizations were investigated. Then, the reasons for ERP system customization were explored. The analysis identified seven possible reasons leading to ERP system customization, classified according to two phases of the ERP life-cycle (prior to “going-live”, after “going-live”). Reasons specific to the SME context include unique business processes, ownership type and organizational stage of growth. Despite conducting case studies in four SMEs, the authors still consider this as a limitation and indicate that further research is needed to investigate the applicability of our findings in different contexts. The study findings are believed to be valuable for organizations about to implement an ERP system as well as for ERP vendors. By identifying the reasons leading to ERP system customization and investigating the effect of the SME context, the study contributes to better understanding of ERP system implementation in SMEs. The authors assert that this paper contributes to the scarce literature on reasons for ERP system customization in SMEs. By classifying the reasons into two phases of the ERP life-cycle, the study also contributes by exploring ERP system customization practice in different phases of the ERP life-cycle.

Thereafter, we have the research paper by Saeed Jahanyan, Adel Azar and Hasan Danaee Fard, entitled “Utilising multi-aspectual understanding as a framework for ERP success evaluation: a case study.” In this paper, the authors seek to apply a philosophical framework in order to come to a life-world oriented understanding of ERP system for evaluating system success. To do so, according to Dooyeweerd's theory of aspects, the authors derive a multi-aspectual understanding based on end-user's everyday experience of the system. In so doing, the authors conducted a qualitative case study based research through which data are gathered based on 17 semi-structured interviews. The authors conducted their empirical research in an Iranian manufacturer which has fully implemented a SAP R/3 system about four years ago. In order to analyse text data an interpretive text analysis is conducted. According to the results, among all 15 aspects and from end-users perspective, the qualifying aspects are analytical, pistic, economic and formative which means that the other aspects are ignored or repressed throughout the organization. All these qualifying aspects include both positive and negative norms but for three of them (analytical, economic and formative) the positive norms are dominant. However, from the practical implication perspective, the authors assert that initially, the management team has to concentrate not only on economic and formative objectives but also on the other aspectual objectives which are more qualitative and intangible. Each aspectual objective requires its own specific methods and data to be measured. So, management team must provide supportive conditions so that multiple measurement systems are allowed to be implemented. Second, through new long-term plans, budgets and training courses, already ignored aspects such as psychic, lingual, social, aesthetic, Juridical and ethical must be more focussed in order to bring to them more visibility and recognition throughout the organization. Third, in order to increase the positive norms for all aspects holding periodical workshops and training courses is helpful. In addition, implementing reward systems can be a complementary action in order to improve positive norms. In the end, the authors assert that evaluating ERP success according to end users perspective brings more visibility to some issues that are usually ignored or missed by quantitative or uni-aspectual approaches.

Zahir Irani and Yogesh Dwivedi