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76 MANAGING KNOWLEDGE WORK AND INNOVATION

information here, and central university information there and make them both
accurate . . . But with the ERP central administrators win!

Frustrated by this situation and cognizant of the increased stress levels of their staff,
powerful faculty members reminded the VP of his official promise that the ERP would
improve University administrative practices for the entire community. Faculty and
their administrators joined forces and used their power to secure a meeting with the
Provost, VP and project leadership where they gave an ultimatum threatening to build
local systems and use the ERP only as a data repository unless the legacy functionality
replaced the time-phased approach. Their influence is illustrated in the narrative of a
faculty administrator:

I took the message over to the [project team], and said . . . ‘we have looked at
e creative way of using the ERP for [grants] and it’s become clear to us that we
need commitments . . . we’re poised . . . to create our own system but I would
like to present this as a University issue and I want to know whether or not
you would like to join us in this effort’. Boom, boom, boom. All of a sudden
it . . . happened . . . overnight. They had a working group that quickly went into
designing a customized system.

As a result of these meetings the project began to move out of paralysis. The legacy
commitment accounting system remained live and new, ‘bolt-on’ tools were devel-
oped that customized the ERP system, so that faculty needs were met. The expecta-
tion was that by appeasing faculty with regards to grants management, the ERP as a
whole would be more likely succeed.
Compromising on system functionality was not something that the project team
had envisioned having to do. However, the project team came to realize that if they
were going to successfully move users out of shadow systems and into the integrated
ERP environment they were going to have to temper their hard-line approach. The
team thus reprioritized their post-installation development activities and created a
customized piece of software that was bolted onto the ERP software.

>> QUESTIONS

1. What does the case illustrate about the relationship between technology and
organization in the context of knowledge work?
2. Given that at the start there was a common goal between Uni and ConsultCo,
why did the cooperation break down? What does this tell you about cooperation
between different groups of knowledge workers?
3. Why did different stakeholders within the University have different understanding
and perceptions of the ERP? What does this tell you about knowledge?
4. Do you think the results would have been different in this case if the users of the
ERP had not been knowledge workers (i.e. university professors)?
5. What are some principles/lessons that you might take from reading this case
about organizational change efforts that are based on IT and their impact on
knowledge work?

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