Integration and Flexibility: Expected and Undesired Effects in Information Technology Projects

Summary

The by-now consolidated Business Process Reengineering approaches systematically emphasise the positive value of organisational integration along a logical sequence of interrelated activities (for example the active cycle of the order or the development path of a new product). The advocates of these approaches maintain that a non-integrated business process tends to create redundancies red tape and an inability to respond rapidly to unexpected changes or to new customer needs. By contrast an integrated process should be marked by greater linearity by non-redundant data by increased flexibility and particularly by greater simplicity (see Davenport and Short 1990). In the past five years the astounding spread of integrated information systems (commonly known as ERP — Enterprise Resource Planning) has involved the wholehearted adoption of this philosophy and this further strengthened the managerial rhetoric of integration. In the light of such enthusiasm the objective of this article could be encapsulated in the say: All that glitters is not gold. Metaphors aside we shall endeavour to show how that while process integration does indeed have positive effects it also has unexpected and negative effects. In fact paradoxically integration can herald greater information complexity rigidity and ambiguity within responsibilities. So far as methodology is concerned data taken from the qualitative analysis of a company case study will be presented in depth. The company in question is a large industrial concern which was analysed six months after the introduction of an integrated information system aimed at replacing the previous systems in the administration-accounting areas and in those connected with the supply chain (purchase sales forecasts planning of production distribution and order management). Naturally the usual methodological principles are valid for analysing a single case: if a statistical generalisation is not possible an analytical one however valid is licit to the extent that the resulting data can facilitate a more thorough reasoning on theoretical concepts (Yin 1989).