The process of social alignment and misalignment within a complex IT project

Evolving competencies to align electronic medical records - a dynamic resource-based perspective on hospitals' co-evolutionary information systems alignment capability

PURPOSE

Advanced Electronic Medical Records (EMR) provide many potential benefits to hospitals. However, because of their broad scope, many stakeholders deal with the EMR and a continuous effort has to be made to keep up with internal and external change. Therefore, hospitals need to deliberately shape their organizational competencies considering the pursuit of alignment, i.e. making sure that the EMR remains optimally aligned with strategies, goals and needs of the hospital and its stakeholders. This paper aims to investigate the evolutionary paths of these alignment competencies and their drivers, from a theoretical perspective of co-evolutionary information systems alignment (COISA).

DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH

This paper reports on a longitudinal multiple case study of three Dutch hospitals which each recently implemented an advanced EMR system. The authors conducted 35 in-depth interviews in 2 phases (before and after go-live of the EMR), and studied documentation related to the EMR implementations.

FINDINGS

The findings show that each hospital's COISA capability shows a different evolutionary path. However, two of the three case hospitals ended up coordinating part of their COISA capability to an ecosystem level, i.e. they incorporated other hospitals using the same EMR system to coordinate their alignment efforts, either from an operational perspective, or in terms of orchestration and strategy. The found evolutionary paths' key drivers include "stakeholder initiative", "accumulating experience", "driving events" and "emerging issues".

ORIGINALITY/VALUE

The findings help healthcare practitioners to deliberately shape their organization's COISA capability in pursuit of EMR alignment. Furthermore, the authors add to the knowledge base on co-evolutionary approaches to alignment through the longitudinal approach.

Fostering Trust and Commitment in Complex Project Networks through Dedicated Investment in Partnership Management

An absence of trust among partners can magnify the risk in a complex project by increasing behavioural uncertainty. Partnership trust can effectively substitute for control, reducing variability of outcomes and increasing value-adding strategic collaboration. It is introduced as strategic countermeasures against risks associated with project complexity that can only be achieved with commitment from all partners. This research conceptualises partnership trust on four dimensions and investigates the roles of dedicated investment and information sharing in partnership trust–commitment. The complexity of trust management is further highlighted in an exploration of the importance of the exchange relationship environment.

Project governance and portfolio management in government digitalization

Purpose

This paper aims to increase the current understanding of the connection between operational level information and communication technology (ICT) projects and national level digital transformation by researching how project governance structures and practices are applied in an e-government context.

Design/methodology/approach

An elaborative qualitative study through public documentary analysis and empirical multi-case research on Finnish central government is used.

Findings

The study constructs a multi-level governance structure with three main functions and applies this in an empirical setting. The results also describe how different governance practices and processes, focusing on project portfolio management, are applied vertically across different organizational levels to connect the ICT projects with the national digitalization strategy.

Originality/value

This study integrates project governance and portfolio management knowledge into public sector digitalization, thus contributing to project management, e-government and ICT research streams by improving the current understanding on the governance of ICT projects as part of a larger-scale digitalization. This study also highlights perceived gaps between current governance practices and provides implications to managers and practitioners working in the field to address these gaps.