IT-projects could be small including the implementation of one single unit of e.g. an Enterprise Recourse Planning system (ERP system) of a SME. It could also be huge including several modules, implementation in different countries as well as the process of developing new modules on the request of the buying company. In this case an implementation project in a Swedish manufacturing firm has been studied. The manufacturing company is a global company, and its sales companies in Europe are in focus in this study. The supplier is a Swedish ERP-supplier, with businesses in all continents around the world.
How does the studied project differ from other IT-projects? The main answer is the collaboration between the two firms in the development process of a completely new module to the ERP system of the supplier. This module has nowadays become a standard module in the supplier’s ERP system. The project has engaged nearly 1,000 people from both the firms. It started in 1995 and ended officially fall 2001.
The aim of the paper is to create an understanding of the development of cooperative interorganisational relations during a projects’ lifetime. More specifically, the centre of attention is on how relations between actors are being developed and changed over time in an IT-project.
Interviews have been carried out with people from the ERP-supplier as well as its customer, altogether around 60 interviews. The interviewed people are project managers, IS-coordinators, key-users, and daily users of the ERP system. The interviews have focused on the respondents’ picture of the implementation project as well as the development part of the project.
The theoretical frame of reference focuses on cooperation in inter-organizational relations. Keywords are negotiations of joint expectations of risk and trust through formal bargaining/informal sense making, commitments for future action through legal/psychological contracts, executions of commitments through role-/personal interaction, and assessments in these phases based on equity (‘fair dealing’) or efficiency.
The results show that in the negotiation phase, ‘fair dealing’ has been the evaluation criteria most of the time. However, in the very beginning and in the end of the project, effectiveness has been the evaluation criteria. Commitments have mainly been based on psychological contracts, a condition that was questioned when people of importance left the project due to the disturbance of the project. In the execution phase, the commitments have been carried out mainly through personal interaction.
Lessons to learn from the project are the importance of written agreements due to misinterpretations of psychological contracts between the two parties. Many misunderstandings would have been avoided; time and money could have been saved, if some kind of written agreements would have been demanded from top management.
Reykjavik: Scandinavian Academy of Management , 2003.