Technology in Organizations: Realities, Linkages, and Critical Success Factors

This issue explores key issues instrumental to the successful use of technologies by organizations. The articles explore the issues from a variety of different perspectives from organization-wide Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems to global, inter-organizational systems. Each article presents a unique perspective for examining the many facets and factors that are likely to be critical to success and then, recommends approaches for better understanding of the implementation of information technology in organizations. The issue begins with the description of an academic ERP by Martz, Raghavan, and Zhang. The authors show how systems in the " real world " have been studied and reported in the information system literature. The authors described how critical success factors such as process reengineering and management commitment have been shown to be related to successful ERP implementation. Due to the rapid growth of ERPs in the business world, they describe the increasing desire to bring ERP related concepts into business curricula. Their article takes one key critical success factor and decomposes it into a set of underlying concepts necessary to help create a workable ERP curriculum. They describe ideas for introducing key concepts in courses and show how their recommendations can operate as a start for developing an ERP program. Similarly, Peszynski uses a case study of the implementation of an enterprise-wide learning management system at Newlands University to explore human factors issues, specifically the role of power and politics in systems implementation. Pesynski describes and demonstrates how current literature is simplistic and misses the complexities involved in systems implementation. Hawking article discusses the complexities when ERP systems are implemented globally. He demonstrates the complexities faced by companies which are implementing these systems in a single country and around the world. The article describes the considerable research that has been conducted on the critical success factors associated with ERP implementations and makes recommendations for further exploration. Reimers, Johnston, and Klein observe how existing models of inter-organisational information systems (IOIS) do not explain IOIS variance and propose that a new theoretical framework should meet three criteria. Specifically, they state that it should: (1) support identification of and distinction between essential properties of IOIS; (2) explain the resilience of IOIS, i.e., why (properties of) IOIS persist in the face of envi