Measuring organisational readiness prior to IT/IS investment

Salleh, H

Abstract

The high percentage of IT/IS projects failure has led to a wide investigation efforts.
Several studies have revealed that new or indeed major changes in IT/IS projects are
affecting people, processes, organisational structures and current IT infrastructure.
The hardest thing when dealing with such issues lies in changing people and business
processes which are better known as 'soft issue'. The resistance to change might
occurred due to lack of creating a sense of need and urgency for change among the
employee and consequently might lead to the IT/IS project failure. The inability to
assess organisational readiness to successfully embrace new systems into their work
environments may result in wasting time and resources by dealing with the resistance
to change or even worse may lead to IT/IS failure.
The majority of current IT/IS evaluation approaches are mainly a product oriented and
post-investment measures which don't address organisational readiness prior to IT/IS
investment. This PhD study has developed a holistic model to measure the capability
organisations to 'successfully' implement IT by measuring their readiness status to
implement new IT/IS systems, prior to IT/IS investment. The model is capable of
assessing; a) the organisational current readiness status in terms of four main
elements; people, process, work environment and IT infrastructure, and b) the target
readiness status which is required for a successful implementation of a particular
IS/IT project. The idea is to provide managers with measurement tools to enable them
to identify where improvements are required within their organisations prior to IT/IS
investment. It is anticipate that this model will significantly contribute to the IT/IS
field by adding a new dimension to IT/IS evaluation which will shift the focus
towards the "soft issues" (organisational factors) rather than the systems themselves.
Three organisations were participated in the validation process of this model and
subsequently a set of questionnaire has been sent to the 250 organisations within the
construction sector to measure the statistical influence of different components of the
model.

Citation

Salleh, H. Measuring organisational readiness prior to IT/IS investment. (Thesis). University of Salford

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Aug 19, 2021
• Award Date: Jul 1, 2007