Daniel B. le Roux
ABSTRACT
Achieving alignment between business and IT represents a desired but mostly unattainable goal for large organisations. While the adoption of vanilla ERP solutions offers a variety of advantages, organisations generally fail to align such artefacts with every aspect of their operations. An important symptom of such failure is that users of these systems experience task-technology misfit in the context of their day-to-day organisational work. In a limited number of studies IS (Information Systems) scholars have investigated users' behavioural responses to experiences of misfit. This study extends that line of research by investigating the adoption of reinvention practices by users as they attempt to cope with or overcome misfit. The paper reports the analysis of data collected through a survey involving 794 users as part of a cross-sectional, multi-method case study. Findings suggest that experiences of misfit trigger the adoption of reinvention practices which, while creating data-related risks, promote flexibility in an IS.
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Index Terms
- Misfit and Reinvention in Information Systems: The Case of a South African Metropolitan Municipality
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