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Sharing Knowledge in a Shared Services Center Context: An Explanatory Case Study of the Dialectics of Formal and Informal Practices

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Shared Services and Outsourcing: A Contemporary Outlook (Global Sourcing 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 266))

Abstract

This study focuses on how knowledge sharing across boundaries of merging entities during an information system (IS) implementation project in a shared services center (SSC) context affects the resulting system functionality. Although the literature stresses the growing adoption of the SSC as an outsourcing model, there is a lack of studies that examine shared services as a dynamic process of knowledge sharing across the organizational boundaries. We draw on a sociomaterial practice perspective and on the theory of workarounds to analyze an IS implementation project in a healthcare organization resulting from a merger of previously independent hospitals. The results suggest that new technology can be enacted in different ways as it links up with practices of different communities of users. We propose a multilevel process model that indicates at the end of the project a resulting mix of formal and informal (workarounds) practices that emerged from a dialectic process of resistance to, and negotiation of, the IS configuration during its implementation.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge the FRQSC funding (no. 2015-NP-180713) received for this project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Distance Learning University of Québec (TÉLUQ), 5800 rue Saint-Denis, Montréal, QC, H2S 3L5, Canada

    Dragos Vieru

  2. Université Paris-Dauphine, DRM UMR CNRS 7088, Place du Maréchal de Lattre de Tassigny, 75775, Paris Cedex 16, France

    Pierre-Emmanuel Arduin

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  1. Dragos Vieru
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  2. Pierre-Emmanuel Arduin
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Correspondence to Dragos Vieru .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Aston Business School, Aston University, Birmingham, United Kingdom

    Julia Kotlarsky

  2. Loughborough Universiry , Loughborough, United Kingdom

    Ilan Oshri

  3. London School of Economics , London, United Kingdom

    Leslie P. Willcocks

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Vieru, D., Arduin, PE. (2016). Sharing Knowledge in a Shared Services Center Context: An Explanatory Case Study of the Dialectics of Formal and Informal Practices. In: Kotlarsky, J., Oshri, I., Willcocks, L. (eds) Shared Services and Outsourcing: A Contemporary Outlook. Global Sourcing 2016. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 266. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47009-2_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47009-2_2

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