How layered reuse can support harmful micropolitics: SAP ERP in surgery planning

Background: Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software was originally conceived for manufacturing contexts and has later been generalized to cover service contexts as well. In hospitals, adoption was accelerated by an increasing commodification and marketization of health care.Questions: What impact do the manufacturing roots of SAP ERP have when the software is applied for service delivery in a hospital?Method: A typical-case Yin Case Study about the surgery planning and execution processes in a large university hospital.Results: One goal of the ERP implementation was to optimize the utilization of the operation rooms (ORs). This goal was largely missed because of too-low quality of planning data effectuated intentionally by the surgeons in order to pursue micropolitical agendas. This was possible because the software paid no attention to micropolitics at all, largely due to its roots in manufacturing and hidden by higher software layers that claimed to be adapted to the hospital domain.Conclusions: Apparently, successful complex reusable application software can create a domain paradigm that subsequently creates product risk by being inappropriately and neglectfully extended into other domains where it does not apply. Software engineering should become aware of this effect and perform research to control it.

[1]  Pearl Katz,et al.  How Surgeons Make Decisions , 1985 .

[2]  Yvonne Dittrich,et al.  Social Thinking - Software Practice , 2002, Social Thinking - Software Practice.

[3]  Katherine C. Kellogg.  Challenging Operations: Medical Reform and Resistance in Surgery , 2011 .

[4]  Mizuko Ito.  Mobilizing Fun in the Production and Consumption of Children’s Software , 2005 .

[5]  J Litmanovitch.  [The hospital in the modern society]. , 1970, Harefuah.

[6]  M. Lynne Markus,et al.  Tailoring ERP systems: a spectrum of choices and their implications , 2001, Proceedings of the 34th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[7]  Geert Kelchtermans,et al.  The micropolitics of distributed leadership , 2016 .

[8]  E. Friedberg,et al.  Local orders : dynamics of organized action , 1998 .

[9]  Elisabeth J. Umble,et al.  Enterprise resource planning: Implementation procedures and critical success factors , 2003, Eur. J. Oper. Res..

[10]  Wanda J. Orlikowski,et al.  Learning from Notes: organizational issues in groupware implementation , 1992, CSCW '92.

[11]  Toni M. Somers,et al.  The impact of critical success factors across the stages of enterprise resource planning implementations , 2001, Proceedings of the 34th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[12]  Joanne Locke,et al.  A Biography: Fabrications in the Life of an ERP Package , 2007 .

[13]  Ingo Bode,et al.  Management in medicine or medics in management? The changing role of doctors in German hospitals , 2014 .

[14]  Constantinos J. Stefanou,et al.  ERP integration in a healthcare environment: a case study , 2006, J. Enterp. Inf. Manag..

[15]  Frédéric Adam,et al.  ERP and functional fit: how integrated systems fail to provide improved control. , 2008 .

[16]  Volker Wulf,et al.  Socio-Informatics: A Practice-Based Perspective on the Design and Use of IT Artifacts , 2018 .

[17]  Neil Pollock,et al.  Generification Work in the Production of Organizational Software Packages , 2022 .

[18]  Johann Rost,et al.  Political Reasons for Failed Software Projects , 2004, IEEE Softw..

[19]  S. L. Star,et al.  Social science, technical systems, and cooperative work: beyond the great divide , 1999 .

[20]  W. Orlikowski.  Sociomaterial Practices: Exploring Technology at Work , 2007 .

[21]  Magnus Irestig,et al.  Politics and technology in health information systems development: A discourse analysis of conflicts addressed in a systems design group , 2008, J. Biomed. Informatics.

[22]  Robin Williams,et al.  Software and Organisations: The Biography of the Enterprise-Wide System or How SAP Conquered the World , 2008 .

[23]  Tom R. Burns,et al.  Micropolitics: Mechanisms of Institutional Change , 1961 .

[24]  Annamaria Bagnasco,et al.  Theoretical Sampling , 2020, SAGE Research Methods Foundations.

[25]  Oswald Jones,et al.  Evaluating failure in the innovation process: the micropolitics of new product development , 1999 .

[26]  Ben Light,et al.  Locating packaged software in information systems research , 2007 .

[27]  John Mylopoulos,et al.  Adaptive socio-technical systems: a requirements-based approach , 2011, Requirements Engineering.

[28]  J. Lindley,et al.  The hidden financial costs of ERP software , 2008 .

[29]  Vlad Krotov,et al.  Business Process Reengineering: Addressing Sources of Resistance and Sabotage Tactics , 2016 .

[30]  Rafael Ramírez,et al.  The Role and Limits of Methods in Transitional Change Processes , 2004 .

[31]  Robert M. Davison,et al.  Critical Failure Factors in ERP Implementation , 2005, PACIS.

[32]  Prasad Bingi,et al.  Critical Issues Affecting an ERP Implementation , 1999, Inf. Syst. Manag..

[33]  Wanda J. Orlikowski,et al.  Learning from Notes: organizational issues in groupware implementation , 1992, CSCW '92.

[34]  Erica L. Wagner,et al.  Networks, negotiations, and new times: the implementation of enterprise resource planning into an academic administration , 2003, Inf. Organ..

[35]  Ingo Bode,et al.  Processing Institutional Change in Public Service Provision , 2013 .

[36]  Robert D. Galliers,et al.  The creation of 'best practice' software: Myth, reality and ethics , 2006, Inf. Organ..

[37]  S. B. Barnes.  Sociological explanation and natural science: a Kuhnian Reappraisal , 1972, European Journal of Sociology.

[38]  Sia Siew Kien,et al.  Misalignments in ERP Implementation: A Dialectic Perspective , 2003, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Interact..

[39]  Neil A. M. Maiden,et al.  Power and politics in requirements engineering: embracing the dark side? , 2012, Requirements Engineering.

[40]  James Cornford,et al.  ERP systems and the university as a "unique" organisation , 2004, Inf. Technol. People.

[41]  Jannis Kallinikos,et al.  Deconstructing information packages: Organizational and behavioural implications of ERP systems , 2004, Inf. Technol. People.

[42]  Jan Mouritsen,et al.  Enterprise resource planning systems, management control and the quest for integration , 2005 .

[43]  T. Davenport.  Putting the enterprise into the enterprise system. , 1998, Harvard business review.

[44]  T. Kuhn,et al.  The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. , 1964 .

[45]  Carsten Engelmann,et al.  Advancing the integration of hospital IT , 2017, Applied Clinical Informatics.

[46]  Neil Pollock,et al.  When Is a Work-Around? Conflict and Negotiation in Computer Systems Development , 2005 .

[47]  D. Turbide,et al.  WHAT IS ERP , 1999 .

[48]  Henry Mintzberg,et al.  The structuring of organizations : a synthesis of the research , 1980 .

[49]  Wes Sharrock,et al.  Project work: The organisation of collaborative design and development in software engineering , 1996 .