What is it about?
Enterprise Systems (ES) have matured significantly since the early Material Requirements Planning systems of the 1970's. Today's ES are large-scale, business-wide, packages that provide high levels of data security and transaction stability. Despite this, practitioners continue to report outbreaks of end user activity in the development of ES workarounds using IT as part of the solution. While the label "Shadow System" is often applied to such development, the paper by Spierings, Kerr, and Houghton claims that Shadow Systems are a sub-group of a much larger collection of end user constructs they call Feral Information Systems (FIS). Using a case study at a large utility company in Australia, they sought information on; A) end user IT skills and acquisition, B) end user allocation of resources, and C) end user's ability to harvest resources to interpose against the wishes of the ES proponents; in FIS development.
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Why is it important?
Feral Information Systems (Shadow Systems) can be a lead indicator that there could be serious issues with the Enterprise System or associated business processes. This paper provides insight into why this is occurring.
Perspectives
Vendors, Consultants, ES implementation “experts” by default lay the blame for the construction of Feral Information Systems (Shadow Systems) at the End User. However, this paper introduces a new perspective that suggests the End User is trying their best to resolve conflicting goals. Rather than blaming the End User, this paper suggests that Feral Information Systems arise in response to the actions and output of Vendors, Consultants, et al.
Mr Anthony Spierings
University of the Sunshine Coast
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Issues that support the creation of ICT workarounds: towards a theoretical understanding of feral information systems, Information Systems Journal, September 2016, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1111/isj.12123.
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