Cultural and Organisational Dimensions

---

Factors Affecting General IS

The acquisition of IT systems has always presented a combination of challenges and risks to decision-makers. The single most important response to software failures since the 1970s has been to increase the rigour of the development process through the adoption of engineering principles (Poulymenakou and Holmes, 1996). Most of the techniques that are adopted in a software development deal with technical aspects of the problem: people are seen as secondary to technology. However, IS projects continue to fail. Several researchers have argued that it is essential to look at IS as social systems, not purely technical systems, for instance Poulymenakou and Holmes (1996) and McBride (1997). Moreover cultural and organisational dimensions play a major role in IS failures. When studying IS project abandonment, Ewusi-Mensah and Przasnyski (1995) found that organisational and social factors contributed significantly to project abandonment. In his study of the concept of expectation failure, Lyytinen (1988) divided IS failure reasons into four classes: information system, the environment of the IS, information systems development (ISD), and the environment of the ISD. He then broke down those classes to 13 different failure reasons as follows:

• Technical and operational reasons

• Organisational reasons

• Individual reasons

• Environmental reasons

• Method-based reasons

• Decision-making based reasons

• Work-based reasons

• Contingency reasons

• Implementation reasons

• Assumption-based reasons

• Political reasons

• Analyst based reasons

• User-based reasons

Lyytinen characterised the technical and operational reasons, organisational reasons, and environmental reasons as "mostly uncontrolled". This highlights the difficulties in dealing with risks that are caused by those factors. Furthermore, in a Delphi experiment ten years later Keil et al. (1998) found that out of eleven risk factors that were viewed as important by experienced software project managers from three different countries, only one factor involved technology. However, that factor, "the introduction of new technology", was not rated highly in comparison to the other non-technical factors. Contingency approaches argue that failure is highly situational in nature and consequently dependent upon a number of environmental factors, which manifest themselves differently in different circumstances (Poulymenakou & Holmes, 1996). Ginzberg (1980) summarised several key organisational characteristics that affect the implementation of IS. These factors are technology, formal organisational structure, and informal organisational structure. According to Ginzberg, a correlation exists between the routine level of the technology employed in the organisation and the type of IS being implemented; procedural systems will be less likely to succeed in organisational sub-units employing non-routine technology, and vice versa. The formal organisational structure, the level of bureaucracy, centralisation, and differentiation play an important role in the success or failure of IS. For example, systems that support inter-dependent tasks will be difficult to implement in highly differentiated organisations. Finally, according to Ginzberg (1980), the norms and power distribution which constitute the informal organisation are key to IS success. As information is a key resource in the organisation, power struggle could occur if the system was viewed by some that would take away their information monopoly. This view is also shared by Dutton (1980) in his explanation of how organisational and interpersonal factors influence the implementation process. Dutton concluded that the greatest determinant was the political environment; he described in detail how the organisational and technical factors were contingent on the political ones. Hence, implementation success or failure in a given situation is seen to be a matter of interpretation, not a unitary phenomenon. Moreover, interpretation may change over time (Myers, 1995).

Taking the contingent approach a step further, Poulymenakou and Holmes (1996) complemented Ginzberg's approach with a framework that divides the variables that affect IS implementation into two major categories. The first category is termed macro contingent variables that are organisational or external in nature. Macro variables are: culture, planning, accountability, irrationality, and evaluation. The second category is termed micro contingent, which are internal or project specific variables. These are: power and politics, resistance to change, and development methods.

McBride (1997) applied the contingent approach to the study of the Communication Company Executive Information System (EIS). In addition to the variables by Poulymenakou and Holmes, McBride added three macro variables based on his analysis of the Communication Company case study: (i) technical awareness, (ii) organisational structure, and (iii) business environment. Moreover, he added two micro variables: (i) strength of organisation needs to the project and (ii) technology shift. He concluded that there is a close and dynamic relationship between the IS and its organisational environment. He also emphasised the importance for IS to be adaptable to the changing needs of the business. In his words: "IS that fail to adapt to changing environment conditions die and are replaced by new systems." The macro and micro variables identified in this section are summarised in Figure 1.

Figure 1: A Summary of Contingent Variables Affecting IS Deployment.

The important role the cultural and organisational factors play in the success and failure of IT systems cannot be ignored. Socio-technical theorists argue that if "systems are regarded in purely technical terms, the result may be sub-optimised, organisationally and socially deficient systems" (Poulymenakou & Holmes, 1996).

Factors of Importance to Government Organisations

The acquisition of IT systems is increasing rapidly in Oman. Omani government organisations are facing serious challenges in the effective use and deployment of IT systems. Public administration theory highlights the differences between private and government organizations, and this has been a topic of on-going research. For instance, (Heeks, 1998a) identifies public and private sector differences under five broad headings: efficiency, decentralisation, accountability, resource management, and marketisation, with the implication that these are worthy goals achieved in the private sector and frequently lacking in the public sector. Be that as it may, government systems share many of the risks, factors and characteristics with standard commercial systems, but in addition Flowers (1996) has identified that they differ as shown in Table 1.

Table 1: Typical Government IS Characteristics.

Factor	Typical government IS characteristic
Size of data	Intended to serve millions of people and deal with huge volumes
Uniqueness	Unique and bespoke.
Complexity	Complex: reflecting a core complex legislation
Timescale	Very long development
Cost	Very high

And, according to the same author, the process of building large and complex government IS is affected by situationally specific constraints (as shown in Table 2).

Table 2: Typical Government IS Development Constraints.

Factor	Typical Government IS Development Constraints
Politics	Priorities may be refocused: for instance as a result of changes in government policy. Impositions of external deadlines: primarily for political reasons
Decision making	Highly bureaucratic decision-making processes. High level of public interests and oversight
Management	Short-term tenures of managers overseeing projects
Lead from	Technology led
Uniqueness	Custom systems rather than packaged preferred.
Cost	Low-cost solutions not sought

The cultural and organisational environment of Oman possesses some peculiarities that are not found in the Western cultures where previous research has concentrated. However, these factors do correlate with many of those identified by the Institute for Development Policy and Management (see for instance Heeks, 1999). Other researchers suggest that IT in developing countries is faced with the following issues; IT introduction is fairly recent (Hassan, 1994), cultural constraints (Goodman & Green, 1992; Ein-Dor et al 1993; Hasan & Ditsa, 1999) under utilization of data resources (Baron, 1976; Ibrahim, 1985; & Attiyah, 1991), poor information culture, IT professional manpower turnover (Khan, 1991), low use of advanced management techniques, low human resources, operational use of IT, and poor IT infrastructure (Harris, 1995). We believe that many of these factors (and additional ones) are associated with the deployment of IT/IS in Omani government organisations, and these need to be explicitly identified. This corresponds with what Moynihan (1997) has argued: that building a single, all-encompassing risk taxonomy for use by all software developers is unrealistic since that does not take the context in which the project is implemented into consideration. In the Omani context we have categorised the prevalent factors under the headings of human resource deficiency, organisational inefficiencies, and the immaturity of the IT business culture. This chapter looks at the origins and the manifestation of these factors from the outlook of the Omani culture and offers some solutions for dealing with them. However, it must be borne in mind that although these factors are discussed separately for clarity, in reality they often have strong influence on each other (Pinto & Slevin, 1987).

---