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Enterprise Integration: Challenges to Understanding

the Phenomena

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Enterprise Integration

Supply Chain Management, ERP and CRM

Covers multiple time frames, levels, career paths, functions

Involves Hidden agendas, power centres inscribed into system

Historical Nature of enterprise system design, implementation and use

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Limitations with Current frameworks

Philosophically:– Interpretive hermeneutics does not account for extension

of the model of the text (Ricoeur 1981) to the social sphere (Thompson, 1981)

* 1) Exercise of power to impede utterances

* II) Structure of language does not change as much as social sphere

* III) The lack of a social theory that accounts for changes in social structures within the model of the text

– Lack of the recognition of an IT artefact

– Solution adopted: combining critical hermeneutics and structuration theory = critical structuration

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Limitations of Current Frameworks

Theoretically:– No single theory can accommodate the scope and width

of holistic research on enterprise integration– Options?

Methodology– Multi-level, multi-functional, longitudinal

Shifting Unit of Analysis– Shifted from Stark a business unit to the overall

conglomerate– Then back to division and finally back to Stark in context

of conglomerate

Reflexivity required at all levels– E.g., Cycles of integration, disintegration and

reintegration found at multiple levels of the conglomerate (Lee and Myers 2004) at later stage of project

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Questions

Philosophically:– How do we restructure the way we fundamentally see the

world to gain new insights upon discovery of interesting data? (Philosophical reflexivity)

Theoretically:– Theory creation, adaptation and revision

– How do we integrate micro, macro and interaction perspectives?

– How do we address problems of disconnection from context?

Methodology:– How do you structure or design or sensitive a study to take

into account multi-level multi-functional longitudinal aspects of enterprise integration in a reflexive fashion?

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Selected References

LEE JC and MYERS MD (2004) The challenges of enterprise integration: Cycles of integration and disintegration over time. In International Conference on Information Systems, Washington D.C.

RICOEUR P (1981) Hermeneutics and the human sciences: Essays on language, action and interpretation. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

THOMPSON JB (1981) Critical hermeneutics: A study in the thought of paul ricoeur and jurgen habermas. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.