Information Systems as change agents–the case of a failed implementation in the Irish Health Service.doc

pages 1 to nCitation for this Article: Sammon, D. and Adam, F. (2007) “Information Systems as change agents – the case of a failed implementation in the Irish Health Service”, Cahier de la Recherche de l’ISC Paris (CRISC), 15 (organisational dynamics), pp.223-246.Information Systems as change agents – the case of a failed implementation in the Irish Health Service An An earlier version of this case was published in Adam, F, Brezillon, P., Carlsson, S. and Humphreys, P. (2006) Creativity and Innovation in Decision Making and Decision Support, Decision Support Press, London, UK.David Sammon* — Frederic Adam**Business Information SystemsUniversity College CorkCork* dsammon@afis.ucc.ie** fadam@afis.ucc.ieABSTRACT. This paper reports on the largest ERP implementation in an indigenous Irish organisation: The adoption of SAP by the Irish Health Service in the period 1997 to 2006. Whilst many organisations in Ireland have implemented ERP, many of the largest ones have been multinationals operating under instructions from their foreign headquarters. The Health Service Executive (HSE), with over 140,000 staff and over a thousand sites scattered across Ireland, offered the opportunity to study the implementation of an ERP application in a complex and nevertheless easily accessible organisation. We studied this project as it developed over time, from the point of view of the problems that arose and the obstacles to achieving the desired project outcomes. We also leveraged the information we collected in the interviews to gauge the attitude of managers and staff as they undertook the project and their understanding of the extent of the novelty that successfully implementing the ERP was going to require in the HSE over a number of years. Our analysis shows that, in this case, as in many others, implementing an ERP should be regarded as a change management project rather than a software implementation, and that, failure to understan