Participation in Social Networks as Feral Information Systems

Social networking systems blur the distinction between the private and working spheres, and users are known to use such systems both at home and at the work place, both professionally and with recreational goals. In fact, several traditional information systems have been modified in order to include social aspects. However, in the vast majority of cases, social networking platforms are used without corporate blessing, maintaining their status as feral systems. This chapter provides some background notions about theories of participation in social networks. In particular, it reviews the notion of social capital, which may be important both for the individuals that are able to accumulate large amounts and for organizations. Subsequently, it shows the role of social capital in the participation in online social networking activities, in the various cases of virtual organizations, virtual teams, and online networks of practice. Finally, it describes the present situation and some possible prospects where social elements are being increasingly introduced into more traditional business systems, such as CRMs and ERPs, with great promises and mixed initial results.

Feral Systems in Enterprise Resource Planning Systems

In order to gain deeper insights into the causal factors associated with feral systems, it is necessary to first understand how the underlying, and often unchallenged, assumptions of current theories shape, influence, and ultimately limit our understanding of these phenomena. A meta-theoretical analysis is presented to make more explicit the foundational assumptions guiding much of the current literature and demonstrating the various limitations associated with these assumptions. The implications of these limitations for theory development are then examined. The main conclusion drawn is that the dominant discourse in the ERPS literature has used overly simplified concepts to understand complex phenomena like feral systems, which are open, non-linear, context-sensitive, and value-driven. The efforts of scholars would be more effective if directed to a clearer appreciation of the present limitations on how feral systems are understood rather than simply conducting more research using the same approaches that have dominated to date.

Architectural Issues Related to Feral Information Systems

User-developed Information System (IS) add-ons, like spreadsheet applications, can be observed in many companies. Such IS add-ons are created for a variety of reasons, as for instance improved system flexibility, faster development time, better customization, and local data control. These IS add-ons may represent a challenge for attempts to create and maintain company-wide enterprise architectures, as they may interfere with an effective integration of information technology resources, the stated aim of company-wide enterprise systems. Therefore, the primary purpose of this chapter is to discuss user-developed information system add-ons from an architectural perspective. The challenge is to ascertain the merits of end-user initiatives and the benefits of enterprise architectures in a balanced manner. This chapter suggests a set of guidelines for handling user-developed IS add-ons in the context of enterprise-wide architectures.

Money

This chapter uses real-world case studies by following two companies introducing Enterprise Resource Planning Systems. The case studies give an overview of the introduction of the Enterprise Systems and detail how the Feral Information Systems came about. The chapter goes on to discuss various possible reasons for the introduction of the FIS, together with methods for avoidance. The chapter discusses whether cost cutting was partially to blame for the failure of the ERP implementations and the problems faced by the ERP implementation teams. Later on, the chapter discusses whether Cloud implementations and Agile project management methodologies may have a positive or negative impact on Enterprise Systems and Feral Information Systems.

Feral Systems as Institutional Phenomena

Feral systems, which sometimes manifest as computer workarounds, are recognized in the IT literature, but little attention has been paid to their persistence. The persistent reality of some computer workarounds may be traceable to discordant top-down institutional environmental pressures and bottom-up influences of day-to-day operational work. The authors build on the constructs of neo-institutional theory to de-black-box the workaround as situated practices built upon institutional logics of work practices, power to decouple by social actors, and material constraints of work. They extend the IT research on computer workarounds by casting them as emergent outcomes that exhibit institutional characteristics lending credence to the existence of feral information systems.

Feral Information Systems and Workarounds

This chapter looks at the extent of feral information systems in organisations and provides some insights for the possible reason for their development in relation to the user resistance literature. The factors associated with FIS development relate to individual, system, organisational, and process issues, and the relationships to each of these issues are presented in the context of existing reserch that has been conducted in three different sites in three different countries, namely Australia, the United Kingdom, and Denmark.

Motives for Feral Systems in Denmark

Feral systems have largely been regarded as the users’ response to discrepancies between official IT software systems and actual business processes. Inadequacies, discrepancies, and absence of systems support to work processes might lead to users initiating systems development themselves: systems involving any combination of software and manual processes. Feral systems are unofficial and exhibit a conflict between formal and actual operational implementation. In this chapter, the use and implementation of feral systems in Denmark are analysed and discussed. It is found interesting to aim for an understanding of feral systems in a small, relatively agile economy with traditionally positive to rapid adoption of information technology in enterprises. The method being used is qualitative case studies in selected companies representing various complexities of their respective business models and industries. The case studies address both issues of organisational and technological nature of the feral systems typically with an offset in the companies’ overall information systems architecture. Among findings are (1) feral systems as a known choice when reflecting business processes with open and non-routinised character, (2) a general acceptance not related to the size or industry, (3) feral systems have received attention as implementations of innovation, (4) feral systems start as opposed to formal and official systems, but during their lifetime they can drift towards a more official status, and (5) feral systems are accepted as low-cost solutions to fill gaps in business process support where ERP systems come short.

Feral Systems and Enterprise Resource Planning Systems

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems continue, even in 2013, to be an important change agenda in business. This chapter initially addresses two major issues left aside in the Information Systems (IS) research on ERP: The technological content and the time dynamics. Using two different small reviews of journal articles, the authors conclude that ERP research is disregarding the profound technology changes and their impact on the challenges for employees, when implementing and operating ERP. Actors within organizations are in fact attempting to cope with these profound technology changes and the business challenges associated with ERP implementations by finding ways to fit their practices into these large integrated systems, and one strategy is developing their own (feral) systems. The chapter concludes with a call for more training and education for all employees in the content of the ERP and a need to build more contextual research in the study of ERP.

Feral Government?

Using workflow technologies as a metaphor for Critical Success Factors (CSFs), this chapter considers their use to improve the performance of major government IT projects, asking whether context can be ignored without repercussion or whether it is highly significant. Focusing on the UK, this exploration begins by defining “context,” then considering what it means in terms of government. A case study demonstrates that context limits the value of CSFs to a major government IT project. Whilst claiming to submit to the imposed workflow technology, the project team developed feral behaviour, manipulating the CSFs to match previous ways of working with no action being taken to ensure compliance. However, increased governance is not the answer. It would simply force these generic solutions on to unique problems; more contingent solutions should be sought to the problem of IT project failure in order to take these highly specific contexts into account.

What Drives the End User to Build a Feral Information System?

In this chapter, the authors explore a wide mixture of economic and social concepts. At first, the reader may wonder what these diverse theories have to do with Feral Information Systems (FIS). However, the research indicates that understanding how these theoretical puzzle pieces interact with each other is important to increasing the understanding of what drives the End User to create Feral Information Systems.