The Biography and Evolution of Standardised Software Packages
News - ESRC has graded the research in this project as 'outstanding' (read final report)
After more than 30 years of software development for an ever-growing variety of institutional and organisational settings, few large-scale information systems are developed completely from scratch. Rather, most software applications are constructed by adapting existing
‘packages’ to new organisational contexts and settings. Generic software packages, such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, cover the fullest range of organisational
activities and processes and are adopted with the aim of achieving substantial cost savings as well as improved access to ‘tried and tested’ solutions, new releases, and an opportunity to update procedures and align them with perceived ‘best practice’.
However, while organisations choose packages because of their economic benefits they are potentially a costly and high-risk strategy. Systems seldom translate easily across boundaries, whether this is between organisations within the same sector, between industrial sectors or between public and private sector organisational forms (cf. Walsham, 2001, Ciborra et al, 2000). There is often a gulf between the system and the specific contexts, practices and requirements of particular user organisations. Amongst the many issues generic packages raise, of particular concern to practitioners is the choice between conducting expensive ‘customisation’ work on standard solutions or undergoing unwanted organisational change in adapting their practices to models of work and organisational process embedded in the software. The development of COTS software differs from conventional bespoke information systems in that packages are designed for a market and not for a specific customer. Suppliers have incentives to build systems that can be applied in the widest range of settings and design software with general or ‘ideal types’ of businesses in mind (even though no such form of organisation actually exists). As concerns rise concerning the incommensurability of systems and contexts there are demands for solutions which are already partially adapted to particular business settings (i.e., ‘semi-generic’ packages, Webster & Williams 1993) and for user-involvement in the shaping of packages. Alongside the adoption of these systems, then, there is an equally important story of innovation within supplier organisations and collaboration with package adopters.
"The research project has been designed and executed with an exceptional combination of rigour and imagination", rappoteur, ESRC.
