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The purpose of this paper is to address the call for more public sector empirical studies on benefits realisation (BR), to contribute to the literature on BR as a dynamic capability (DC) within the context of IT-enabled innovation in a public sector context and to highlight the challenges facing organisations if they adopt a BR competence and capability framework.

The empirical research conducted within this paper is an exploratory survey. Exploratory surveys are particularly useful when investigating a little known phenomenon and can help to uncover or provide preliminary evidence of association among concepts. This survey was a census of all National Health Service acute hospital trusts in England.

The study indicates that most hospitals that participated in the survey have a basic approach to BR and have yet to develop a more mature approach that would provide the strong micro-foundations of a BR capability.

The BR framework that has been the basis of the survey is interesting in terms of its components but is limited with regards to the micro-foundations of a benefits realisation capability within an organisation. The research suggests that organisations in the public sector need to focus much more on staff development and recruitment in the area of BR to ensure that they have the appropriate skills sets for a rapidly changing environment.

The paper proposes a framework for BR capabilities and IT-enabled change, and suggests that although the concept of maturity is valuable when considering the micro-foundations of BR, DCs change and respond to stimuli within the external and internal environment and must be renewed and refreshed regularly.

Organisations spend a lot of money, time and resources on enterprise system (ES) implementation and often they do not realise the expected benefits from these complex systems. There is a gap in the literature in providing sufficient insight into the implementation process or how an ES might influence or contribute to a culture change. The purpose of this paper is to address the gap in the ES literature around culture by exploring the implementation that was undertaken within a large UK university.

This paper contributes to the higher education (HE) and ES literature through an in-depth study of an ES, Strategic Information Technology Services (SITS) implementation within a university in the UK. The study was undertaken over a three-year period where one of the authors was embedded within the organisation.

Using a cultural analysis framework, the extensive rich data were analysed and the outcomes indicate that SITS has had a huge influence on the culture of the university; the technology’s rigid structure has imposed many changes that had not been anticipated.

ES have recently emerged in the HE sector where they are intended to support the management of student data and provide strategic management information. Although there are many studies which have explored important aspects of the implementation of ES, one area that appears to have been under-researched is how these systems are implicated in culture change within organisations. The results of this study will enable managers as well as IT specialists to gain rich insights into an ES implementation in the HE sector and to use this knowledge for future implementations.

The purpose of this paper is to address a gap in operations management empirical research through the use of diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory to develop further insight into patient flow and bed management, a problem that has been taxing healthcare organizations across the world.

The study used an action research (AR) approach and was conducted over an 18-month period within an acute hospital in the north east of England. Data were generated through enacting AR cycles, interviews, participant observation, document analysis, diaries, meetings, questionnaires and statistical analysis.

The research conducted within this study has not only led to practical outcomes for the hospital in terms of the successful adoption of a new patient flow system but has also led to new knowledge about the determinants of diffusion for technological and process innovations in healthcare organizations which are complex and highly political.

AR is not suited to all organizations and is most appropriate within those that are culturally attuned to participative and democratic ways of working. The results from this study are not generalizable but some similar organizations may see merits in this approach.

The AR approach has supported the hospital in adopting the new system, PFMS. This system is helping to improve the quality of patient care, providing facilities to support the work of clinicians, aiding timely discharge of well patients back into the community and saving the hospital money in terms of not needing to open emergency “winter” wards.

From an operations management perspective this work has demonstrated the potential to bring theory, in this case DOI theory, and practice closer together as well as show how academic research can impact organizations. Local-H intends to continue developing its AR approach and take it into other systems projects.

Modern NHS organisations are seen to be increasingly reliant, in terms of achieving improvements and service targets, on the efficient provision of information to enable clinical, administrative and managerial decision making. A key barrier to effective ICT introduction in NHS trust hospitals has been identified as the complex social, organisational and political issues endemic within the organisation, preventing true discourse amongst key stakeholders. This paper describes how the adaptation of critical social theoretical thinking may be used to develop an innovative approach to participative process and information flow modelling. This approach is used within a hospital trust to investigate its potential as a precursor to ICT procurement and development. Empirical results of the research are described with suggestions for a more informed approach to ICT introduction, leading to a re‐examination of issues concerning: historical context, emancipatory practice and the role of the systems analyst.

The English National Health Service has undergone unprecedented political, economic and technological change. This has resulted in a requirement for radical improvements in operational efficiency and effectiveness. An effective IT infrastructure supporting key operational processes and management reporting is now seen as essential. This paper outlines the findings from empirical research in a North East hospital Trust. The authors collaborated on a requirements analysis project to investigate and model business processes and information flows using an automated IDEF0 software tool. A participatory action research framework was used, informed by principles derived from critical social theory, to describe the complexity of the situation and provide improved communication amongst stakeholders. The paper concludes by reflecting on the need for more “ideal” speech situations in order to deal with complex operations management problems where political, power and social issues can obstruct effective implementation of new computer‐integrated operations.

The publication of the United Kingdom National Health Service (NHS) Information for Health Strategy heralded a new strategic focus for the provision of information systems (IS) support across the NHS. Key changes concerned the placement of much greater emphasis on clinical information needs by route of the Electronic Patient Record (EPR) and the Electronic Health Record (EHR). The last decade has seen unprecedented changes within the NHS due to government policies, political ideology, health‐care reform and pace of technological progress. This paper argues that this rate and scale of change has outstripped the ability of health‐care organisations to respond effectively in order to implement the key goals set by strategic policy makers. An historical review is combined with an analysis of recent empirical survey data to determine the evolution and progress of the NHS IM&T strategy over a period of ten years. The review and analysis is enabled by adopting techniques and theory derived from research within the field of Information Systems, whereby Information Systems maturity models are used as an heuristic to measure levels of sophistication of IT adoption and use. These models demonstrate that NHS hospitals are fairly immature in terms of the adoption and usage of information systems and technology; struggling to provide adequate foundations for systems integration (data, work and culture). Conclusions reflect on the current progress and ambition of the strategy and comment on its potential outcome given existing NHS knowledge of IT, skills, capability and infrastructure.

Discusses the NHS Executive′s information management and technology (IM&T) strategy and its relationship to the 1991 reforms. Examines the recommendation for large acute hospitals to adopt integrated hospital information support systems (HISS). Reports that a recent census of these hospitals, undertaken by the authors, suggests that the implementation of the strategy′s recommendations has been slow at the local level. Attempts to diagnose the factors that are impeding implementation, using the evidence provided by the census. Identifies four main problem areas: the lack of success of past IM&T initiatives undermines confidence in the current strategy; the strategy is poorly aligned with other policy initiatives; the legacy of discrete, proprietary information systems within hospitals makes the creation of an integrative information environment difficult to accomplish without massive investment in new systems; and there are implicit contradictions between the following: the absence of a comprehensive post‐implementation evaluation of the economic, technological and cultural feasibility of HISS at any of the three HISS pilot sites; the strategy′s advocacy of HISS as the way forward for large acute hospitals; the requirement for a comprehensive business case to support any substantial investment in IM&T. Concludes that a massive rethink of policy is required, with a much greater emphasis on research, development and independent evaluation.

This paper argues that UK business and management schools continue to operate a gender blind approach (or at best gender neutral) to management education, research and the development of management theory. This echoes a pattern repeated in the practice of management, which closes down and inhibits opportunities for management to be “done differently” and for organizations to be different. Our aim in this paper is to critically scrutinise and enable a consciousness raising in ourselves and our audience by highlighting what we understand as gender blindness within management, management research and education. However, the issue of whether this gender blindness results from “not seeing”, “being unaware”, “suppressing gender” or “gender defensiveness” remains problematic. We conclude with a call for an “unlearning” and a “rethinking” of gender blind management education and provide some examples of how this might be achieved.

The aim of this paper is to use an innovation decision process to examine CRM technology adoption in small to medium-sized enterprises and its intrinsic link to the nature of the organisation and the individuals within it.

A survey was administered to SMEs in Southern California to measure the organisational characteristics, specifically management characteristics, employee characteristics, IT resources and firm characteristics. The perception of CRM, decision to adopt CRM, and extent of CRM implementation were also measured. Previously validated instruments were used where required. The data were analysed using multivariate and logistic regression.

The results indicate that management's innovativeness affects the firm's perception of CRM systems, but age, education and gender do not. The decision to implement a CRM system is influenced by management's perception of CRM, employee involvement, the firm's size, its perceived market position, but not the industry sector. However, the number and types of CRM features implemented are affected by management's perception of CRM, employee involvement, the firm's size, the industry sector, but not its perceived market position.

This study is specific to Southern California and the sample size is relatively small, although sufficient for this analysis. The study should be replicated in more diverse geographic settings with a larger sample.

The study provides evidence of the need for management to be supportive of innovation and technology, to evaluate the available resources (IT knowledge, skills, infrastructure) within the organisation, to recognise the importance of employees' contributions, and to be aware of the features appropriate to their company's size and industry sector before undertaking CRM technology adoption.

The findings from this study extend the understanding of CRM adoption in SMEs and help in building a greater understanding of the factors associated with such adoption. It will be of great value to owners/managers in SMEs who are considering adopting CRM.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on three fundamental human-related behaviour factors associated with Lean Six Sigma (LSS) projects in German manufacturing small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) on the readiness of people (managers and their staff) to commence LSS projects. These are core personal competence, strategic vision of the people and the organisational culture of the specific organisation.

Based on a thorough review of the academic literature a set of hypotheses were constructed to examine the level of association between people’s competence, vision and culture with LSS readiness within SMEs. This was done using correlation and regression analysis. Data collection were carried out in seven different German manufacturing SMEs involved in aerospace supply and agro-food manufacturing using a survey instrument.

It was found that there is a strong positive association between the core competence of people and organisational culture with readiness for commencing LSS in the manufacturing SMEs studied. The core values of people, education level and the vision of making continuous quality improvement were identified as key variables in promoting LSS readiness in these manufacturing SMEs. This study indicates that these “softer” variables can be essential to successful LSS implementation and need to be explored further before undertaking the process.

From the perspective of the implementers of LSS the results of this research could be of interest to different manufacturing SMEs intending to embark upon an LSS journey as it highlights the significance of human-related behavioural factors in the process. SME organisations may consider carrying out development or training with their managers and employees around personal and organisational values, addressing core competence and strengthening organisational culture in order to facilitate LSS readiness and enhance the prospect of its success.

It would appear that this LSS research has not been carried out within the German manufacturing SME context before and although discrete in nature has surfaced the “softer” variables of core competence of staff and organisational culture as important readiness issues to address when undertaking LSS. This integrated approach of human behavioural factors, organisational culture, LSS and manufacturing SMEs demonstrates the originality of the research.