TOWARDS A REVISED FRAMEWORK OF MANAGEMENT THEORY & PRACTISE IN UNCERTAIN, CHAOTIC ENVIRONMENTS: MANAGING POST-IMPLEMENTATION IN LARGE-SCALE INFORMATION SYSTEMS PROJECTS

Research into information systems development (ISD) continues to focus on pre-implementation activities such as software engineering, software testing, requirements specification and so on (Stapleton (2001)). Given the extent of the problems that many firms have encountered after going live with large-scale Information Systems, serious economic risks have been associated with the current wave of advanced information technologies (Davenport (1998)). To date a significant amount of IS literature has documented dismal accounts of ERP failure. Such accounts suggest a significant lack of knowledge concerning post-implementation activities. This short fall in knowledge has significant ramifications for organisations implementing large scale Information Systems such as ERP. Throughout his research Stapleton has found post-implementation to be the critical period when the system becomes bedded down in the host organisation (see Stapleton (2000 and 2001)). However, given the huge contribution of post-implementation activities to the overall success of IS projects and the reality that most difficulties emerge after the system goes live, very little work has been done to establish key activities for this critical period. Wilcocks, Feeny & Islei (1997) reinforce this issue claiming that ‘the attention given to post-implementation processes is undoubtedly disproportionate in light of its importance to ISD’.