The nature and processes of IT-related change

Paper presented at IFIP WG 8.2 Conference, Cambridge, UK.This paper presents the findings of an empirical survey of senior IT managers' perceptions of their company's approach to IT-related change in the UK. The survey was based upon a theoretically-derived framework for the classification of information systems development approaches: this is used to map trends in development approaches graphically. The findings of this study are also used to examine the feasibility of academic, business-process oriented approaches to IT-change strategies, which encourage high degrees of user-participation in the change process - an examination that has largely been missing from contemporary discussions of IT-related organisational change. The paper thus has important implications for research and practice. Specifically, the findings suggest that the overall management approach to IT-related change is less critical to the extent of user-participation in the overall change-process than is the question of whether system development is performed in-house or by a third-party. Additionally, these findings demonstrate the overriding preponderance of technical/functional approaches to IS development during the system design stage of development, regardless of whether a business/organisational or a technical/functional emphasis is given to the IT-related change overall