Is Process Innovation Evolution in Organisations

ABSTRACT This study identifies how Information System process innovations' (ISPIs) were evolved in three organisations using a sample of 124 internally developed ISPIs over a period that spanned four decades. The four distinct time generations analysed are early computing (1954-1965); main frame era (1965-1983); office computing era (1983-1991), and distributed applications era (1991-1997). These follow roughly Friedman's and Cornford's categorisation of IS development eras. Four categories of ISPI's are distinguished: base line technologies (T), development tools (TO), description methods (D), and managerial process innovations (M). ISPI evolution in the three organisations is characterised with two types of modifications based on Tolvanen's (1998) local method development framework: the degree and frequency of modifications. The degree of ISPI modification defines how large the changes are that are made to the local ISPI to improve its applicability. The frequency of ISPI modification explains how often an ISPI is changed. For each era the variation between the modifications in the four ISPI categories is analysed. The analysis shows that within the organisations, the degree of ISPI modifications and the frequency of ISPI modifications varied significantly in the ISPI categories. The variation can be partly explained by differences in the development environments, differences in ISPI categories, and the differences in the organisations. Keywords: Empirical research, Longitudinal Study, IS Process Innovations, degree of ISPI modification, frequency of ISPI modification INTRODUCTION One type of innovation, called here Information System (IS) Process Innovation has become important for organisational effectiveness. IS process innovation (ISPI) is defined here as any new way of developing, implementing, and maintaining information systems in an organisational context (Swanson, 1994). IS development (ISD) can be described as a change process, which aims at improving and changing a present information system (IS) or implementing a new information system. IS process innovations (ISPIs) on the other hand play a major role in changing the information system development (ISD) process in organisations, and they can improve the process and outcomes of information systems. In the context of our paper we consider that a specific ISPI is chosen for use at a specific ISD project. Our ISPI definition is relatively broad and covers a wide range of innovative activity within IS development. First, an ISPI can embrace changes in the technologies that offer new computing functionality or novel non-functional features (like portability, security) for the delivered IS . Typical technological innovations include adoptions of programming languages or operating systems. ISPIs can also include administrative innovations, such as the deployment of proj ect management methods, the introduction of participative approaches to guiding development interactions, or the contracting of development work outside. In Swanson's terminology, ISPIs thus cover thus both technological (Type Ia) as well as administrative innovations (Type Ib) (Swanson, 1994). Both administrative and technological innovations can be further classified into two sub-categories. In the administrative ISPI category we distinguish between management innovations (M) and description innovations (D). Within the technological innovations, we separate between tool innovations (TO) and core technology innovations (T). The motivation for such classification is that most of the IS development literature clearly distinguishes between organisational innovations (like project management principles, programming teams, extreme programming) and notati onal innovations (like the development of UML, method engineering and so forth). Some ISPIs specifically address the need for software engineering task improvement or advance core technologies including programming languages or data base management systems. …