Change readiness in initiation of information system implementation

Abstract

Companies in the 21st century business environment have become readily accustomed to organizational change, but often fail to create the readiness needed to achieve desired outcomes. Suggestively, the issues might stem from change managers not acknowledging key factors for the context in which the change takes place; and thus, do not take appro-priate actions. In this thesis, perceptions of individuals during the initiation of change is studied in order to determine change readiness. The aim is to gain knowledge from the perceptions individuals have early on in change when there is little information available. Literature indicates that change readiness needs to be developed by change management interventions both on an organizational, as well as an individual level prior to change. Through analysis of the content, context, individuals, and change management actions, as well as assessment of participant perceptions, one can better understand which factors affect the change in either a favourable or detrimental manner. Qualitative research was used for this study with semi-structured interviews and participant observations. A case study was performed at a global power and automation products company, where an information system implementation was intended to improve the company’s opera-tional performance. The aim was to perform a readiness assessment in the initiation of a global change project’s local implementation, and based on the assessment, point out ad-vantageous and detrimental aspects acting upon the change to aid change management decision making and eventually achieve successful change. Within the diverse participant group, individuality is palpable. Participants perceived the change differently particularly on the individual level. The major reasons were how the information system pertained to 1) job descriptions and 2) business characteristics. In initiation of change people do not seem to draw steadfast conclusions due to lack of information and knowledge; thus, change readiness is in a particularly variable state in initiation of change. Left out from the study was a competent assessment of the weight of each factor in the particular con-text. Therefore, the author suggests that further research needs to be performed on the quantification of factor-importance for change managers to further improve decision-making during change.