SAP as Emergent Infrastructure in a Global Organization
Keywords:
Emergent process, Infrastructure, Actor-networkAbstract
This article presents and discusses globalization and IT infrastructure development and use in the European fertilizer division of Norsk Hydro. The main element of the infrastructure discussed is a new SAP based solution for this division. However, this solution is not an isolated artefact. Its important aspects are emerging, as it is becoming an integrated part of a larger infrastructure. An SAP installation in a global organization becomes a large and complex infrastructure. Just as much as this infrastructure is designed and controlled by managers and IT personnel, it becomes an actor shaping its environment as well as its own future. Like any actor, the technology builds alliances with others. However, the alliances might change over time. In the case reported here, SAP first got allied with top management, playing the role as a powerful change agent. Later on, however, SAP got allied with local managers and users, helping them bring the change process under their influence and into the speed they preferred. Currently, SAP is changing its role as it gets installed and integrated into a larger corporate infrastructure. As such, it becomes everybody's enemy by resisting all organizational change. (1) More precisely the article addresses the emergence of an IT infrastructure in which SAP R/3 installations are important elements. Just for convenience, we denote this an SAP infrastructure. (2) An earlier version of this article was presented at and published in the proceedings from ICIS '98 in Helsinki.How to Cite
HANSETH, O., & BRAA, K. (1999). SAP as Emergent Infrastructure in a Global Organization. Systèmes d’Information Et Management (French Journal of Management Information Systems), 4(4), 53–70. Retrieved from https://revuesim.org/index.php/sim/article/view/70
Issue
Section
Empirical research
License
The author bears the responsibility for checking whether material submitted is subject to copyright or ownership rights (e.g. figures, tables, photographs, illustrations, trade literature and data). The author will need to obtain permission to reproduce any such items, and include these permissions with their final submission.
It is our policy to ask all contributors to transfer for free the copyright in their contribution to the journal owner. There are two broad reasons for this:
- ownership of copyright by the journal owner facilitates international protection against infringement of copyright, libel or plagiarism;
- it also ensures that requests by third parties to reprint or reproduce a contribution, or part of it, in either print or electronic form, are handled efficiently in accordance with our general policy which encourages dissemination of knowledge within the framework of copyright.
In conformity with the French law, the author keeps the 'moral rights' related to the article:
- The 'authorship right': It is the author's right to have his name associated with each publication and exploitation of the article.
- The 'integrity right': It can be claimed by the author if he finds that during an exploitation, his work has been distorted (cutting, reassembly...).