Information Systems induced change

Martinsons and Cheung (2001) as with Rintala and Suolanen (2005) raised important questions about how Information Systems induce changes in work practices. In their work, Rintala and Suolanen (2005) acknowledged that technology is known to have significant impacts on job roles. They found that changes in job descriptions can occur in three different ways; transferring tasks from one job description to another, fusing two or more job descriptions or by adding new tasks to the job descriptions. These are similar to the theoretical explanations of work role transitions given in the work of Nicholson (1984). Davidson and Chiasson (2005) also raised some of the key questions previously posed by Johnston and Vitale (1988). These are questions about Information Systems’ impact on organisational structure and strategy, and inter-organisational Information Systems’ potential impact on industry structure. In their work, Johnston and Vitale (1988) had emphasised the need to recognise that the electronic link between several organisations accounts for much of the changes in their relationship.

Furthermore, Vaast and Watsham (2005) examined how practices impacted by Information Systems change at the micro/individual relationship level. They approached the understanding of Information Systems induced change, in the context of consonance and dissonance. Vaast and Watsham (2005) argue that IS- /IT-induced change may be explained by the dynamics through which agents modify their actions and representations to re-establish consonance when they perceive a dissonance. They defined representations as the way in which actors act in different work contexts. Furthermore, they suggested the need to examine representations that shape agents’ understanding of their work and technology, and the consonance or dissonance they may experience, to fully understand how IS/IT may trigger changes in work practices. Vaast and Watsham (2005) further

40 assert that new actions that result in changed practices must be recurrent, socially shared, and one may argue further, socially acceptable.

In their work, Lyytinen and Newman (2008) support the idea that Information Systems change has to do with deliberately changing an organisation’s subsystems that deal with information (Swanson 1994). Furthermore, that the dynamics of such change has remained challenging and disputed. Nevertheless, they affirm that such change entails implementation of new work elements within an organisation’s social and technical systems that aid the management of information.

Furthermore, Yeh and Ouyang (2010) found, in a study on how organisations change when ERPs are implemented, that power related issues are of significant concern and crucial to the success of such implementations. In essence, they affirm the need for understanding the values of individual groups within the organisation and the management of the dynamics of power within them. They found that personnel like functional managers were concerned about losing power in decision-making processes and therefore sought to sabotage the Information Systems project. Power and the retention of legitimacy are therefore essential considerations especially when Information Systems are implemented in highly knowledge dependent fields, practices or organisations. This gives credence Symons’ (1991) advocacy for an interactionist approach to managing Information Systems that would focus on historical contexts, social contexts, and formal/informal information flows. It was also reaffirmed in the latter work of Rizzuto et al. (2014) by their advocacy for change management practices that account for multilevel interfaces evident in individual-, organisational- and team- level interactions.

Skoumpopolou and Nguyen-Newby (2015) in a study of organisational impacts of implementing Information Systems also found that one of the key impacts is the growth of alternative power bases within the organisation (a university). Furthermore, the emergence of new roles, responsibilities and different working environments have enabled a shift of significant power to ‘an elite group’ of administrative staff who have control of data (and the information system), at the

41 expense of academics who perform the core functions of teaching and research within the university. This is also similar to the role of Champion and its impacts on existing power dynamics within organisations and multi-organisational teams. The role of Champion is therefore not new in the field of Information Systems. For instance, Champions acting as opinion leaders, change agents, and top management surrogates have long since been identified as key to Information Systems implementation success (Curley and Gremillion 1983).

While much of Information Systems literature has dealt substantially with the subject matter, current literature still asserts the dearth of knowledge that informs managers about how best to facilitate the continuous post-implementation adaptation of Information Systems. Regarding this, Aanestad and Jensen (2016) cited an instance of Information Systems implementation that was initially planned to be a minor project but ended up leading to a thorough redesign of work practices and routines within the organisation (Aanestad and Jensen 2016). Aanestad and Jensen (2016) further emphasised that when Information Systems are implemented, the organisation works to adapt the acquired Information Systems and the work processes to ensure the realisation of expected benefits.

2.3.5 Summary

Information Systems are crucial to the improvement of organisations’ business processes and outcomes. However, achieving success at implementing them can be challenging. This section has provided a context for understanding the issues surrounding the implementation Information Systems, since it is the normative literature in which BIM literature is embedded. In the construction industry, BIM is a promising innovative approach to creating and managing construction information throughout the building lifecycle. It is the process of digitally representing the physical and functional characteristics of a facility in a way that provides a shared knowledge resource for information about the facility and enables its management by organisations and project teams involved throughout the facility’s lifecycle (NIBS 2007). Therefore, as with Information Systems implementation within organisational and project team work systems, it poses

42 several costs and risks despite its potentials. These are discussed in the next section along with its impact on existing ways of working.

BIM implementation benefits, costs and risks 2.4

2.4.1 BIM implementation initiatives in different countries

BIM implementation has been argued as a way of improving the outcomes of construction projects and has gained prominence across the world. More so in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Scandinavia (Shou et al. 2015; Smith 2014; Wong et al. 2010). Nonetheless, BIM has been in use in several more countries than are commonly referenced in literature. The important distinctions are to what extent is BIM being implemented on specific projects, how many projects are executed on the BIM platform, how standardised are BIM project practices and the presence or otherwise of a clear and deliberate push or mandate driving BIM adoption and implementation. Also pertinent is the extent to which the push is supported by the government, professional institutions, construction- related private sector organisations, and educational institutions to provide the necessary policies, legislation, incentives along with required guidelines for the standardisation of BIM practice.

Government involvement is particularly important for several reasons. First, governments are often the biggest investor of resources in the construction industry. Therefore, they hold a significant stake in the success of the industry and every effort to innovate, such as with BIM, benefits from their support. The second reason is linked to the heavy dependence of BIM-enabled project success on the standardisation of shared project information, guidelines and processes (Gu and London 2010; Porwal and Hewage 2013; Singh et al. 2011). Support from government bodies for BIM adoption and implementation has also been identified as necessary for providing necessary mandates, incentivising legislation and policies. These go a long way in driving in part, support from construction professional institutions while also helping to drive public and private client buy- in and demand for BIM. These are essential for a complete project team buy-in into BIM implementation on projects. A good example is the UK construction

43 industry’s approach to BIM adoption and implementation, which is the most structured among countries leading in BIM. Nevertheless, in countries like South Africa where BIM model-authoring software have been in use for at least a decade, despite a lack of country-specific BIM standards and guidelines, progress is yet being made.

The uptake of BIM in the South African construction industry as with other African countries has however been slower than has been witnessed in Europe and America (Froise and Shakantu 2014; Harris 2016). The South African BIM Institute surveyed owners, architects, engineers and construction organisations to understand the alignment of their perceptions on BIM related issues. Responses from the survey revealed the “industry’s inherent traditionalism towards Building Information Modelling technologies, with many survey respondents preferring to follow trends rather than to take the lead. Many who have adopted a BIM technology strategy have done so in a silo approach” (Harris 2016 p. 2). To this end, the report concludes that the local industry is a laggard regarding technology adoption and implementation.

These assertions are evident in the smallness of their sample considering that they attempted to cover all South African provinces, and the BIM institute is perhaps the only organisation with a register of BIM implementers in the country. The respondents were made up of 4 contractors, 17 quantity surveyors, 4 planners, 4 contracts managers, 22 BIM managers, 22 architects, nine draughtsman, 15 technical experts, 11 engineers, 11 project managers, 10 government employees, 1 assistant manager, and 4 IT services professionals. These were drawn mainly from Gauteng (45%), Western Cape (31%) and Kwa-Zulu Natal (8%) provinces (out of 9 provinces). These are indicative of the local industry’s lag in BIM uptake. It is also similar to reports from Cameroon (Abanda et al. 2014) and Nigeria (Abubakar et al. 2014) of lag and lack of local standards and guidelines.