Relevance

Having reflected on the findings of this dissertation, it is now time to return to the question of relevance, by summing up the contributions and the implications for practice, or what Miles and Huberman (1994) refer to as the ‘utilization’, ‘application’

and ‘action orientation’.

5.2.1 Contribution

The purpose of this dissertation has been to gain a better understanding of role-oriented ESs through investigation of design, implementation, and use of the systems. From the answer to the three research questions and subsequent discussion and reflection we may derive a number of contributions to advance this understanding.

First, the presented work has contributed to the very definition of what constitutes a role-oriented ES, which is not present in the existing literature. This definition may contribute to classifying ESs as role-oriented or not, and to framing of future studies of the phenomenon. Second, the finding of roles as embedded or independent concepts in modeling organizational roles of users in deep structures of ESs and subsequent unified or componentized representation in the design of surface structures through multiple user interfaces, contributes to closing the gap in existing knowledge on how to move from the analysis and modeling of roles to representing them at the user interaction level. The investigation of the representation of roles in the design of ESs also suggests, that the traditional RBAC approach is suitable for reflecting organizational roles for the purpose of security and access rights, but insufficient for designing representation of roles at the user interaction level.

The pre-studies for the investigation of role-oriented ESs has contributed to advancing our perception of how the structure of ES ecosystems and how version transitioning occurs in these ecosystems. Additionally, the framing of the study within an ES ecosystem context has provided the opportunity for describing how the design of role-oriented ESs as a tailorable technology can be shaped by the different actors in an ecosystem, and how the deep and surface structures may be controlled and influenced by these actors. While this may be implicitly implied in existing research on ES ecosystems, it has not been explicated and formalized.

Moreover, the study of implementation of role-oriented ESs contributes to our understanding of how the predefined roles may be tailored to fit roles in individual

organizations through tailoring for role specialization or tailoring for role narrowing.

The investigation of implementation of role-oriented ESs also contributed to developing an integrated model for how to choose between system and organization as basis for ES requirements analysis, and between processes and roles as concepts in that analysis. This integrated model contributes to understanding how organizations, systems, processes, and roles can be aligned during ES implementation and extends the current process-oriented view in ES implementation literature.

The investigation of potential benefits of role-oriented ESs and the following integration of the relationship between process fit, individual fit, and role fit contributes to the theoretical understanding of how role-oriented technology may influence organizational performance. The findings thus contribute with empirical evidence and extension of previously suggested benefits of role-oriented ESs. The findings also contribute to expanding the notions of fit not captured by existing fit theories, such as TTF. The inquiry into role-related misfits contributes to understanding the imposition misfits that are inherent to the role-oriented approach and the deficiency misfits that may be remedied. The classification of role-related misfits of role-oriented ESs thus contributes to a theoretical classification of the misfits that may arise when orienting ESs, and technology in general, towards roles. The findings thus contribute to formalizing previous suggestions of role-related misfits in the literature. Moreover, the proposal for how to remedy the role aggregation misfit as a deficiency attributable to the embedded approach for representing roles in deep structures of systems exemplifies how deficiency misfits may be addressed, and also provides suggestions for how Personas can be integrated with roles as an independent concept. This proposal thus contributes to bridging organizational theory which conceptualizes individuals in organizations as roles, with HCI and CSCW literature which traditionally conceptualizes users through user models.

Finally, the study of role-oriented ESs also contributes to extending the very perception of how roles are formed. The suggested extension of system roles as influencing the perceived role of the focal person thus demonstrates how technology may directly impact the role taking process in organizations. This extension thus contributes to established organizational role theory by extending the theory from which the dissertation draws its theoretical understanding of the concept of organizational roles.

5.2.2 Implications for practice

As the dissertation was inspired by and has drawn its findings from the study of practice, it seems appropriate to attempt to contribute back to practitioners by highlighting some of the findings that may have implications for them. Although ES vendors that already have or are contemplating orienting their ESs towards organizational roles or including predefined system roles in their systems have undoubtedly given considerable amounts of thought to how to represent the role concept, they may still learn something from this dissertation. The distinction between modeling roles as embedded or independent concepts and subsequently representing the roles at the user interaction level through either a unified or a componentized approach should be considered explicitly before embarking on designing role-oriented ESs. ES vendors that have already designed role-oriented ESs and are selling them may find the classification of imposition and deficiency role-related misfits interesting and use the classification to identify misfits that can be addressed (deficiencies) and misfits that are inherent to role-oriented ESs (impositions). Moreover, vendors may be pleased to find that the findings in this dissertation explicate how role-oriented ESs contribute to organizational performance. Finally, the vendors may learn from the study of version transitioning when developing strategies for releasing new versions of their ESs into their ecosystems.

Implementation consultants may find the integrated model for aligning organizations, systems, processes, and roles particularly useful. The proposal of moving between

different bases and foci in the requirements analysis may provide consultants with the option of beginning their requirements analysis in the combination of basis and focus that best suits a particular implementation context and client organization, and then move on from that point. Implementation consultants may also want to pay attention to the different types of role-related misfits to identify candidates for the misfits among the users early in the implementation project. Finally, consultant companies (VARs) may be inspired by the strategy of developing a “catalogue” of customized roles for reuse across implementation projects.

To the customer organizations, this dissertation illustrates the potential benefits they may gain from selecting and adopting role-oriented ESs. Specifically, the findings suggesting a reduced need for training of novice ES users when introduced to role-oriented ESs may be appealing to organizations with many novice ES users. However, customers adopting role-oriented ESs should be aware of the effects of role narrowing and inhibition of organizational role transition. Similarly, customers with certain industry-specific roles should also ensure that the selected role-oriented ES support roles in their industry vertical if they want to avoid role specialization misfits and gain full potential of the role-oriented approach. Finally, customers may want to consider the possibilities of using predefined system roles as inspiration for “designing”

organizational roles, but should be aware of how predefined system roles influences the role taking process in their organization.