Article draft, 2012-01-13
Usability and strategic logic in information systems –
supporting insight and action in IT-enabled change
Mathias Cöster1, Nils-Göran Olve2, Åke Walldius3
Note to students: This draft was presented at a conference, and has not yet been finalized.
The research was part of a larger study. A report in Swedish is available and contains the
“instructional document” referred to below (p. 4). Those interested can request a digital copy
from Nils-Göran Olve. In addition to the references below, you may find it useful to google
the terms ‘balanced scorecard’, ‘strategy map’, ‘usability’ and ‘change inertia’.
Abstract
Information systems (IS) are increasingly viewed as key enablers in organisations’ quest for
distinctive work practices and uniqueness. To increase the likelihood of success in this, we
expect that organisation leaders increasingly will want to develop and use such systems in
conjunction with the strategic logic that they intend to pursue: how users of IS (employees,
customers, and business partners) should process and utilise information.
Definitions of IS usability already imply this in talking not only of user satisfaction but also
efficiency and effectiveness. However, “effectiveness… in a specified context of use” (ISO,
1998) must be judged with reference to the intended logic for such a context. This makes it
imperative to link strategy and estimates of usability in changing IS, and to include in such
systems relevant parts of the work practices supported by the technology in question.
We relate this need to the four dimensions suggested by Iveroth (2011) in handling IT change,
which we interpret as insight and action inertia due to established systems and routines (cf.
Hedberg 1976). Eliciting employee views and involving stakeholders by visualising the logic
behind possible changes in IS and how they are used should reduce the risk of incoherent,
misinformed and ultimately unsuccessful projects.
The article reports on experiences from testing a new approach where two proven tools were
combined to achieve this: user questionnaires and strategy maps. Two Swedish organisations,
a transport company and a regional administration, considered developing their intranets. To
support their discussions about benefits from this, these methods were used interactively to
increase understanding of potential effects of the intranets on organisational objectives. The
methods were accepted and appreciated and enabled a time-effective discussion on how to
develop the IS, i.e. the intranets. Both organisations concluded that their paths towards more
effective use of intranets mainly depends on changing behaviours and competencies. This
suggests that a crucial next step for them is to address the inertias that have to be managed in
IT-enabled change.
Keywords: information systems, usability, user participation, strategy, strategy map, balanced
scorecard, visualising strategy, management control of intangibles, change inertia
1
Gotland University College
Linköping University and Uppsala University
3
Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm
2
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1. Introduction
It is now generally accepted that information technology, IT, influences the strategic logic of
businesses. In the early days of digitization Porter & Millar (1985) identified how technology
may change industry structure through, for example, increasing the power of buyers and the
threat of substitutes. Carr (2003) on the other hand claimed that IT has little strategic value, as
new technology rapidly becomes a commodity and available to any company in any industry.
Therefore its contribution to competitive advantage was at best transitory.
At the industry level, however, it seems indisputable that IT during the last decades has
transformed several industries in dramatic ways (see e.g. Cöster 2007, Carlsson et al., 2011).
Firms have failed or gained from this, less by applying IT as such than from using it to change
processes, products, organisations and boundaries. Glazer (1993) claims that because IT is
transforming the nature of business, the success of an organisation depends on how it
manages the information itself. Brynjolfsson and Saunders (2010) conclude from their
statistical data that combining new IT and changes in processes and competencies creates
business benefits.
How IT is utilized in business processes and combined with human intelligence, i.e.
influencing the whole information system (IS), may be the most strategic issue facing modern
organisations. Management in most organisations not always realize though how much
concomitant change in other parts of an IS, besides IT, that are needed. Furthermore an IS
investment may no longer be a clear-cut option because the concept of IT holds a myriad of
hard- and software applications that have stand-alone functions as well as being embedded in
e.g. manufacturing equipment.
Efforts have been made to classify these versatile fields of application as different types of IT
investments. For example, Falk & Olve (1996), Lucas (1999) and Aral and Weill (2007)
divide IT investments according to their strategic purposes such as infrastructure investments,
transactional investments, informational investments, and strategic investments. Khallaf
(2011) classifies IT investments as being either externally or internally focused. The external
ones assist the firm to gain a sustainable competitive advantage and improve market positions,
particularly through the improvement of customer satisfaction. Internally focused
investments should lower costs of doing business, improve the quality and speed of
operations, eliminate business processes, and increase flexibility.
Common for these frameworks is an ex-ante perspective. They support a discussion on
forthcoming investments and how a new IS may support and develop existing business
models. However, they rarely engage lower-level managers and employees in discussions
about their experience of legacy systems and ways of working. As IT no longer is a new
resource but rather builds on existing solutions, experiences and attitudes should be relevant
in preparing for new ways of working, particularly if we believe Brynjolfsson and Saunders’s
(2010) claim that investments in organisation and competencies usually requires much more
attention and resources than IT as such.
We are thus arguing that IS change processes should start from an awareness of stakeholders’
experiences from current systems and ways of working, and how the latter fit into the
strategic logic of the organisation. An organisation can then focus change on those
components of its ISs, work processes and competencies that seem most urgent to improve,
given its particular quest for a distinctive strategic logic. To achieve this, it seems necessary to
access the views of a broad range of users of current ISs, and fit such views into the
framework of strategy when discussing them in the project team and with executives of the
organisation. These discussions should then continue during the development and
implementation of a new IS.
2
To test this approach, we worked with two organisations who are currently considering
developing their intranets. We used strategy maps – a format for documenting the inherent
logic in an organisation’s strategy proposed by Kaplan and Norton (2004) – to improve
understanding of how their intranet change should be addressed. Strategy maps are visual
representations of an intended organisational logic, intended for communication about that
logic (Olve et al., 2003; Nilsson et al., 2010), and they were here combined with usability
questionnaires to identify strengths and weaknesses in current systems and procedures.
2. Aim and context
This study builds on research conducted by UsersAward, a Swedish organisation which is
closely affiliated with the labour union movement and also several universities (Walldius et
al. 2009). For more than a decade, it has investigated user views on the usability of their IT
supports through questionnaire studies and interviews. In recent years, there has been an
ambition to broaden these studies to indicate the effects of IS on organisations’ objectives: i.e.
business benefits from improvements in IT and IT use. The study reported here was part of
this effort.
The aim of this study therefore was to investigate the effects from including usability
information, in the broad sense of indicators of an IS’s impact on an organisation’s strategic
objectives, when senior managers consider changes in that system.
This approach should clarify the linkages between an IS and the organisation’s objectives
through the joint development of new IS and associated work processes. It could also be used
as an aid in realizing business benefits by setting targets for the introduction of IS changes
and monitoring performance following the implementation.
In the study, we gained access to two organisations considering changes to their intranet
applications. The article therefore may be of particular interest to others in this situation.
3. Methodology
Both the organisations in our study used elements of the balanced scorecard methodology in
their management control system. To use strategy maps to describe the logic of IT use like we
propose is not, however, a common practice even in firms using scorecards, and certainly not
in these organisations. It will be illustrated below. To combine it with findings from usability
studies is something we have not seen done before.
3.1 The organisations
Our study was conducted in parallel in two organisations, both located in the residential site
of a Swedish province. They were chosen because they represent a variety of type of
organisations, i.e. both public and private, but also because both chose to analyse intranets,
making the outcome of the studies possible to compare.
One is a transportation firm, performing services to inhabitants, businesses and guests to the
region based on a contract with a public entity. Contracts are renewed for long time periods
and may be interpreted as a de facto monopoly lasting a number of years. The firm also
performs auxiliary services to encourage tourism in the region.
The other organisation is part of the local authority in charge of public services in the region.
It has an internal contract model, and we worked with a profit centre performing a wide range
of services for all other parts of the organisation. The intranet is potentially used by everyone
in the organisation, not just the service unit, and it has a complex role in the service unit as an
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enabler of their own work but also a tool in fulfilling the tasks they receive from other parts of
the organisation.
3.2. Activities
In the research activities we used an action research approach. This requires collaboration
through participation, that participants are empowered, and that during the process they
experience learning and social change (Bryman and Bell 2011; Ahlström et al. 2007). Argyis
et al. (1985) write that the research also should consider a real-life problem and that it is an
iterative process with a purpose to contribute to practice as well as academic theories. The
process that the researcher goes through to achieve these themes is a spiral of action research
cycles consisting of four major phases: planning, acting, observing and reflecting (ZuberSkerrit 1991).
In our research several of these requirements were judged to be fulfilled. Over a total period
of about one month there were several meetings with managers from the organisations
(preceded by a negotiation to get access for the researchers and set up the collaboration). One
of the authors, who is active in the local university college and had not been previously
involved in the research project of which this study formed part, acted as process leader,
managing contacts, chairing meetings and documenting conclusions. Meetings differed
somewhat between the two cases, but in essence contained the following (in brackets how the
meetings relates to the four major phases of the action research method mentioned above):
1. Identification and demarcation of the information system to be discussed (in both
cases the intranet), and who should be part of discussions. (Planning)
2. Visualising the strategic role of the intranet in a preliminary strategy map, i.e. showing
the expected impact from intranet-related activities on other processes and their
results. (Acting)
3. Modifying a pre-existing questionnaire about the intranet’s usability against the
backdrop of the preliminary strategy map, to include questions about aspects of
intranet use which seemed likely to influence the benefits from the intranet. Together
with this, questionnaire recipients were identified.(Acting)
4. Following this the questionnaire was distributed electronically by the researchers, and
the answers collated and analysed. (Acting and observing)
5. The group then discussed the results and revisited the strategy map, in order to draw
conclusions about priorities in future efforts to increase the benefits from intranet use
in the organisation. (Reflecting)
To structure this sequence, one of the researchers had developed an instructional document
advising a similar sequence, which however became modified in practice. It included the use
of a questionnaire study (administered by UsersAward, an organisation with a long experience
of usability studies), the result of which should be visualised in a strategy map. The document
was read by the contact person at each of the organisations, to whom it was explained that the
study was a test of the method laid out in the document.
The meetings were held at the offices of the two organisations, and representatives read
documents and research reports and accepted the researchers’ conclusions.
4. Combining strategy mapping and usability studies
Strategy maps are graphical representations linking important objectives in an organisation.
They portray observed or assumed causal relationships among these. In the form originally
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proposed by Kaplan and Norton (2004), objectives are identified within four so-called
perspectives: financial, customer, internal processes, and renewal and development. To
achieve long-term success, any organisation should perform well within all four perspectives.
The strategy map, as a compact representation of strategy, must reflect the priorities selected
by top management (and at least by implication, the board) and can be viewed as an account
of how they expect to achieve the ultimate goals of the organisation.
Today IT obviously will enter into this. If an IS is externally focused, customer reactions to it
may be important for financial objectives such as sales, and IS-related objectives may be
included among prioritised objectives in the customer perspective. For an internally focused
IS, such as an intranet, the internal process perspective is likely to include objectives for how
the system is utilised and appreciated by users. In both cases, the renewal and development
perspective may include objectives for further developing IS use. A high-level strategy map
for the entire organisation may not have room for specific, IT-related objectives, unless they
are central to an organisation’s quest for distinctiveness and success; however a strategy map
for IT or a specific IS may be used to portray its expected strategic contribution. This is the
way we used strategy maps in this study. Examples are given below in the context of our
discussion of our two cases.
Our reasons for exploring how strategy maps can be used to map IS change are several.
Coordinated change in IT, information flows, work practices, and competencies – as
advocated by the authors we quoted earlier – requires dialogues between managers with
different backgrounds and skills. Readiness to change may depend on a sense of involvement
that is helped by discussions of its logic. After several decades of IS use, most organisations
have numerous employees whose experiences and views might be valuable in preparing for IS
change. We discuss this in the following sections.
4.1 IT change
Iveroth (2010; 2011) proposed a ‘commonality framework for IT-enabled change‘, suggesting
activities in four dimensions. He labels two as ‘soft’ and two as ‘hard’, making it tempting to
arrange his framework along two axes like this:
Soft
Insight
Action
Common interest: Why?
Common meaning: How?
Common ground: What?
Common behaviour: Has adjustment taken place?
Figure 1: Dimensions of IT-enabled change identified as soft and hard and influencing either the insight of an
organisation or enabling it to act.
Hard
By labelling the columns ‘insight’ and ‘action’, we want to link Iveroth’s framework to the
ideas of Bo Hedberg and his co-workers in the 1970s. In a much-quoted article, Hedberg et al.
(1976, p. 56) discuss inertia to change:
Inertia is not always undesirable; it has an optimum value that varies with the organization’s
strategy and its environment. The usual organization probably has too much inertia. Inertia that
is only moderately excessive causes an organization to respond a little too slowly… Gross
deviations from optimum, however, produce truly serious consequences: massive inertia is one
reason an organization drifts into a stagnating environment.
In a mimeographed report in Swedish, Hedberg and Ericson (1978) distinguished between
two forms of inertia: “insight inertia” and “manoeuvre inertia”. These are the concepts which
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provide us with our column headings above. When Iveroth notes that change requires
convincing answers to the questions Why? and What?, we propose that this is about the need
for “insight” that change is needed. His other two dimensions How? and Has it happened?
link to “action” – or “manoeuvring” as Hedberg and Ericson called it.
Their point is that the inertia that Hedberg et al. discuss in the quote above is of two kinds.
“Insight” that change is needed requires information and mental acceptance from people in
the organisation. “Manoeuvring” in addition requires concrete ability to change: making
investments that require resources and take time, learning new skills etc. Inspired by Iveroth,
we propose that both contain soft as well as hard components. To enable change, Iveroth
(2010) suggests that organisations could work on various factors, of which the following is a
selection:
Soft
Insight
Action
Common interest: Do stakeholders agree about
the need and direction?
Common meaning: Sufficient knowledge about
subcultures and actual practices
Common ground: Shared vision, plans, work
Common behaviour: Key indicators, monitoring
logic and practices
tools and corrective actions
Figure 2: Important common factors, soft and hard, that influence the inertia of an organisation.
Hard
This may be interpreted in the following way. Successful change requires that the need and
usefulness of change is accepted (Soft insights), but also that there is reasonable agreement on
the logic behind change (Hard insights). To execute change, new practices have to be
established and made into routines. This is a matter both of shared understandings (Soft
action), and that the new behaviour can be observed and verified (Hard action). Depending on
how well these factors are managed it will influence the organisation’s inertia.
Iveroth stresses human communication and convictions. Common to all four cells in the
matrix is a need for descriptions of the logic of how change will improve things, including
observations about current practices and their effects, and a comparison with how changed
practices will improve things – and, as change is undertaken, if this happens. We will argue
that the combination of strategy maps and questionnaires may be a useful tool for those who
want to act as stewards in change processes that ultimately depend on human communication,
insights and conviction (Wenger et al., 2010; Licker, 2010).
The word steward here implies that important change agents here may be people driven by a
desire to improve that is not necessarily imbued in them by their formal work description or
the incentives provided by higher management (cf. Davis et al, 1997). Common interest,
ground, and meaning that lead to common behaviour may sometimes come about because top
management decides what to do and convinces the organisation to do it. Our approach follows
another track: to engage the minds of a large number of managers and employees is desirable
and requires tools that enable the emergence of a shared logic for change.
4.2 Mapping usability
Objectives in strategy maps are normally operationalized into metrics on a scorecard for the
organisational units or persons responsible for realising its intentions (see Olve et al., 2003).
This suggests a link with usability studies. ISO 9241-11 (ISO, 1998) specifies that a usable IS
should achieve user satisfaction, efficiency and effectiveness. Each of these imply cause-and-
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effect relations and objectives for work situation, resource use, and organisational aims,
respectively. Objectives and indicators of these can be fitted into the strategy map framework.
In drawing a strategy map for an IS change initiative, the function of the IS in the
organisation’s internal processes needs to be determined. There is an obvious difference
between, say, systems for production planning, customer orders over the internet, and
financial reporting – although several or most of these functions may all be integrated in an
enterprise system. Both our two case organisations elected to focus on their intranets in our
study. They were fairly old and used as an infrastructure available to all for a variety of
purposes.
IS usability thus may be understood as how well an IS supports its functions, in terms of user
satisfaction, efficiency and effectiveness. These will partly be measurable only indirectly,
through questions about attitudes or estimates of ease and frequency of use. It seemed to us
useful to fit such information into the structure provided by a strategy map for the IS in
question. Many questions in the usability studies routinely performed by UsersAward already
mapped naturally onto the strategy map, while others could be devised to inform about
conditions that were critical to various objectives (boxes) in the strategy map.
5. The role of intranets in organisations
The objects of study in both our cases were the intranet of the organisations. Definitions of an
intranet underscore that it is to be considered as a private computing network, which is
internal to an organisation and only allows access to authorised users. Furthermore it supports
business processes by being a tool for communication, internal connections and representation
of explicit information (Curry & Stancich, 2000; Skok & Kalamanovitch, 2005; Martini,
Corso & Pellegrini, 2009).
The literature as well as everyday experience suggests that intranets have become integral to
organisations’ use of information. Their design and use thus should be adapted to the needs
arising from the organisation’s way of operating and its strategic intentions. For instance,
intranets can be used to access data needed for work processes as a substitute for manuals,
ensuring that such data are current and uniform for all users. They may be used to govern
processes or to link employees engaged in the same process, enabling cooperation at a
distance or independent of work hours. Employees may use intranets to input information
they believe is useful to colleagues, and this function sometimes is developed into a database
of “best practice”. Intranets have come to substitute for internal newsletters in many
organisations, providing a conduit for stories and general news items that often are intended to
create a sense of belonging and shared knowledge. In some organisations this has led to the
creation of new roles for monitoring and guiding the contents available over the intranet,
while others leave this function more to the collective wisdom of most people in the
organisation.
These examples imply that an intranet, even without changing its technical properties
(software, access, etc.), may come to serve rather different uses. Its usability must be viewed
‘in a specified context of use‘(ISO 9241). What is satisfying, efficient and effective depends
on the organisation’s needs and intentions concerning information management, and the role
information should play in its processes. These in turn should reflect its quest for success. For
instance, is it possible and easy for employees to access the information they need when
confronted with a customer complaint? Should they, can they, and do they, then document
such contacts so that such data can be used by others facing similar situations?
This may seem more a matter of established work processes, knowhow and competencies
than the intranet. But taking the usability definition seriously, further developments of an
7
intranet are obviously impossible to discuss without considering how the intranet fits into the
intentions behind its design and use.
6. Experiences from the cases
Two central parts of the study in each of our two case organisations were the intranet strategy
maps and the questionnaires. We will discuss each in turn together for the two organisations,
and then our attempt to map questionnaire findings onto the maps.
6.1 Intranet strategy maps
As a logical basis for our two studies, we developed strategy maps focusing on the intranets
together with each project team. As the two organisations did not previously use strategy
maps, this included sketching out what one of the managers called an “embryo” for a future
strategy map for this firm. The transport firm’s intranet strategy map is shown below as
Figure 3.
Figure 3. A strategy map for an intranet in a transport firm – see text.
For each of the four perspectives used in Figure 3, there were a number of considerations:
Financial (here, Owner) perspective: The intranet will have limited direct impact on financial
objectives, but it is important to include overarching objectives as a reminder of the aims of
the organisation. Obviously, new investments in improved functionality or internal resources
spent on learning to use it will have an impact on costs, and behind the concern about various
customer groups or stakeholders there will be an expectation that their satisfaction will impact
future demand.
Customers: Like in most modern organisations, the majority of intranet users have more or
less frequent contacts with customers. In one of the organisations, we focused on an internal
support unit, meaning that the direct customers were other organisation members. But final
external customers need also to be considered, as should media who may influence
customers’ perceptions about services.
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Internal processes: We included in the scorecards two kinds of processes: those directly
involving the intranet (i.e. publishing and accessing information), and the “normal” work
processes where information from the intranet may have an impact – in these cases essentially
all other internal processes.
Renewal and development: This should ideally have been the work to change the intranet and
the processes where it is used. A strict interpretation of this would in our two cases have
rendered this perspective empty, as the intranets had been in use for many years without any
major change initiatives, neither concerning the software or its use. We therefore decided to
include as provisionary contents for this perspective a reminder of on-going general change
initiatives in the organisation, where intranet changes to be specified later could contribute.
By visualising the intranets’ roles in the two organisations in this way, we aimed to encourage
a discussion about issues such as:
•
Are there functions they could have which are not now realised (due to habit, actual
difficulties experienced, intended or unintended management priorities)
•
Could the existing intranets be mobilised for renewal initiatives that are under way, or
will be undertaken soon?
•
Do any such changes in intranet use require technological developments such as
investing in a new version of software or new terminals?
The firm depicted in Figure 3 provides transport and booking services and, like many others
providing public transport services, operates a local monopoly regulated by long-term
agreements with a public entity. In principle, employees will use its intranet to handle all parts
of its value chain. User satisfaction, efficiency and effectiveness all must be viewed in
relation to this. The other case was similar in principle, although of course different in terms
of specifics.
6.2 Usability questionnaires
UsersAward has a long experience of investigating user experiences from all kinds of IS.
Recently, its standard questionnaire has been extended to include some questions about
benefits from IS use. In the case organisations, managers decided to customise the
questionnaire extensively. This obviously reduces comparability with previous usability
investigations. On the other hand, it increases relevance as few such studies would have
involved intranets.
In modifying the questionnaires, both case organisations followed the general outline of
UsersAward’s standard questionnaire. The customisation involved:
•
Adapting terms for organisational units (and positions)
•
Specifying types of benefits (and recipients) to correspond to the case
•
Modifying some of the questions, making them relevant to the case
•
Modifying scales for frequency of use and time gained from use, making them
relevant to the case.
In the transport firm, questionnaires were distributed to a little more than 400 employees, and
in the local authority service unit to at least 180. Response rates were 43 % and 46 %
respectively. Questionnaires were customized during our meetings with managers in the two
organisations to include fairly detailed questions about why, when and how frequently the
intranets were used.
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6.3 Linking strategy maps and questionnaires
Because questionnaires were designed against the background of the strategy maps, it is not
surprising that people in the two organisations as well as the researchers found clear links
between the strategy maps (Figure 3) and questionnaire results. In each organisation,
questionnaire results were reviewed by one or two persons from the project team, together
with one of the researchers. A number of statements (seven at the transportation firm and
twelve at the local authority) concerning positive and negative experiences from using the
intranet were used to summarize their findings. In Table 1 the statements are summarized and
sorted into statements for the transportation firm and the local authority.
The transportation firm
The local authority
The intranet is used on daily basis by a large part of
the employees and they rate its usefulness as good.
Users find it relatively hard to find the right kind of
information, and editors find it difficult to publish
new information on the intranet. The information
renewal frequency is relatively low.
The intranet is used in order to find general
information of the company or to forward the user to
other sub-systems
The intranet is used in order to find general
information on the organisation.
The users believe that the intranet contributes to
increased knowledge and quality of the work
performed.
The users believe that it is managers who gain the
most benefits from using the intranet.
The users do not experience that the intranet
contributes to benefits for customers, and it is
difficult to give input regarding customer relations or
suggestions for improvements to the system or to get
feedback on overall performance from it.
It is unclear if the intranet contributes to time
savings, to better communication or to benefits for
customers. It does not contribute to reduce stress
among the employees.
Table 1: A summary of statements formulated based on the results of the questionnaires.
In both cases the major purpose of using the intranet was to find general information and in
neither case was it considered as a forum for two-way communication. Furthermore, contents
on the intranet were renewed rather infrequently, resulting in too little attention from users
when new items occasionally appeared.
In both organisations users believed that they gained some kind of benefits from using the
intranet, although it was mostly managers that gained them in the local authority. They did not
believe that customers gained benefits from the intranet and it was also unclear if using the
intranet contributed to other benefits besides catering for day-to-day informational needs.
In the next step the statements were related to the different parts of the strategy maps. At the
transportation firm all statements besides one (the intranet does not contribute to customer
benefits) was found to relate to the process perspective in the strategy map. The statement on
lack of customer benefits was believed to mainly influence the customer perspective. All the
statements at the local authority could be related to the process perspective. But to a greater
extent than at the transportation firm, the statements were considered as influencing also the
other three perspectives.
6.4 Outcomes
During our final meetings in the two organisations, the relation between the questionnaire
statements and the strategy maps initiated discussions on what could happen and what the
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effects could be if the intranets could be further developed, according to the statements
derived from the questionnaire results.
One such observation at the transportation firm was that, if it would become easier for single
employees to contribute with input to the system, then the firm could more systematically
collect and evaluate information on customer complaints. The direct effects could become
more satisfied customers and the indirect effect would be an enhanced interest from
employees to report experiences relating to customer satisfaction. It was considered important
though, if developing the intranet, not to lose it as a tool for employees to acquire useful
knowledge for their day-to-day work – something they believed they did with the current
system.
Another theme initiated by the statements derived from the questionnaire results was that the
intranet could be used for inviting employees to tell their personal experiences from working
in different parts of the organisation. This had been tried on occasions, it had been well
received, and the managers thought that it could amount to an important element of
organisational learning, if existing features of the intranet could be geared to support it.
At the local authority the analysis showed that making it easier for editors to publish
information, e.g. by updating the editor interface and templates, could have positive impact on
employees taking part of general information and for customers to identify and formulate
proper service orders. An indirect effect of such activity could be an increased use that
enhances internal and external communication, which in the long run may save both time and
costs.
These are but some examples, but representative in the sense that the discussions rapidly
turned to rather concrete benefits, and that the participants seemed to find it easy to relate
these to the causal logic of the strategy maps.
7. Discussion
A common approach to IS development is to establish a list of requirements, based on
recommendations from vendors and interviews with selected users. The use of a
questionnaire, like the one described here, captures a broader range of experiences and
reactions. But more specifically, it can reflect the insight that needs are not uniform, by
placing these reactions into the context of the strategic intentions of the organisation’s
different stakeholders.
Two cases obviously cannot prove that our approach is a fruitful one, especially not for the
wide range of other types of information systems that organisations may want to discuss.
However, from the present trials we are prepared to conclude that
•
Everyone rapidly seemed to accept the strategy map format, and find it useful as a tool
for discussing how their intranets linked to potential benefits, the mechanisms through
which these could come about, and how intranets and intranet use could be further
developed.
•
In customising questionnaires, the strategy maps served as a backdrop which aided in
identifying critical steps in achieving usability – i.e. enablers and obstacles for
successful intranet use were identified.
•
When questionnaire results came in, it proved possible to draw compact conclusions
that could be mapped onto the strategy maps. This process was facilitated by one of
the researchers, who had however not suggested the method used. We conclude that
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the method proved possible to apply, but don’t know to what extent it could have been
done by the managers themselves.
•
The discussion rendered ideas about further development of intranets and intranet
usage. Although the intranets in the two organisations had not been upgraded for
several years, it was concluded that it was the way they were used rather than the
intranets’ technical features that should be prioritised for future development.
Relating the results to Figure 2, the use of strategy maps combined with user questionnaires
seems useful when trying to establish Insight in an organisation and prepare for Action. More
specifically Why? (soft insight) should be answered by the causal links in a strategy map.
These are rarely certainties but rather likely outcomes, based on experience or assumptions
about employee and customer reactions. Questionnaires will chart the pre-change situation,
and also provide valuable information on expectations. What? (hard insights) refers to the
actual changes that will happen, and strategy maps may be combined with specific metrics in
scorecards that serve as targets and road marks for the proposed journey. How? (soft action) –
common meaning, according to Iveroth (2010; 2011) – also refers to the map logic but with
the added dimension of assurance that change is not imposed from above without knowledge
of the current situation.
Here the two organisations have different challenges. The transportation company on the one
hand has a clear and overall common goal for all its employees: making the transportation of
customers work as well as possible. On the other hand it’s an organisation with a versatile
group of staff that over the years has developed different subcultures when it comes to e.g.
meeting with customers.
The local authority unit has more diversified operations stretching from complex IT and
finanical services to simple cleaning services. Because of this the practices and subcultures in
the organisation are perhaps too diverse to include them all when preparing to develop their
intranet. Instead it could initially become necessary to prioritise for which employee group the
intranet should first be further developed.
In our research we didn’t participate in the final quadrant of Figures 1 and 1, establishing
Common behaviour (hard action). We understand Iveroth and Hedberg as regarding this as a
result from the other three, and in our two cases we just witnessed the preparations for starting
on the journey that should lead to improved intranets.
To summarise, it was our impression that the groups we worked we very willingly accepted
the proposed method as useful in preparing for possible intranet change in their organisations,
and that this can be interpreted in terms of meeting (at least partly) the need to establish
common interest, common ground and common meaning. To begin with, these shared
understandings obviously apply only to this group, but we have indications that they also
wanted to broaden this discussion to include other managers and employees.
8. Summary and conclusions
We started out from the oft-repeated claim that IT’s benefits today depends as much or more
on how it is used as on the properties of the software as such. This creates the need to discuss
both together. This is in line with the UsersAward approach of assessing both artefact and
usage. As our goal also was to indicate possible business benefits from improvements in
usability, we argued that such benefits must be seen in the context of an organisation’s
strategy. Most organisations are already using computerised IS, and development of such
systems is no longer a greenfield exercise. Consequently, views and experiences from users
should be taken into account.
12
Building on these observations and beliefs, we devised a combination of a usability
questionnaire and strategy maps to document the intended logic behind an IS, and provide
data on current use, as a preparation for future improvements.
In using this combination as a full-size experiment in two organisations considering changes
to their intranets and their utilisation, we found that:
•
The method was accepted and appreciated by people taking part in the process, and
attracted considerable interest as a way of accessing valuable usability information
from employees
•
It seemed easy and time-effective to discuss the intranets in this way
•
It was striking that the path towards more effective use of intranet in the two cases did
not seem to be technological, but rather should build on changing behaviours and
competencies.
In respect to the goal of our study, to enhance the UsersAward questionnaire method to also
cover business benefits from usability initiatives, we can conclude that extending the
questionnaire with some tailored questions on stakeholder strategic intentions and then
mapping the survey result onto a strategy map seems to have at least two important benefits.
First, it provides for overview and a sense of context when interpreting and presenting survey
results. Secondly, this accessibility in turn makes it possible for all stakeholders, especially
end users, to engage with the map, to question the cause-and-effect relationships implied in it,
to propose usability initiatives that would better match the agreed strategy and, after sufficient
deliberation, to agree on shared measures.
In respect to the results from the two cases, the method seemed to influence both
organisations’ insight inertia (Hedberg and Ericsson, 1978), and especially the hard insight
dimension in figure 2. In a relative short period of time the organisations came up with
conclusions on how the IS, the intranet, related to their business logics and possible actions to
take in order to further develop it.
Important to notice though is that the actual initiative for conducting the research came from
the research group, not the organisations themselves. If the researchers had not come up with
the initiative maybe the insight inertia, the inability to consider the necessity to develop a
better fit between the intranet and the business strategy, had remained. And it is still too early
to know if the organisations will proceed with changing their intranets, and to what extent our
study may influence such developments.
No trigger for establishing awareness of a need for change is included in our model. To what
extent IS development should be initiated by top management, by IT staff or by managers and
employees active in the processes that an IS supports is outside the scope of this article.
However, in using the word "steward" at the end of section 4.1 we signal our belief that the
insight and action to which our method should contribute is not likely to be achieved by
management (or the IS specialists which it consults) just convincing others in the organisation
to change. The research tradition of UsersAward, as well as the experiences reported recently
by Iveroth and in the 1970s by Hedberg and his coauthors, point to the need rather to see the
four common factors in Figures 1 and 2 as emerging from widespread discussions in an
organisation. These are likely to be started by management, by IS specialists like a CIO or by
a controller, but we believe it is essential that they then are able to involve the large number of
the people who nowadays often are going to use a new or reformed IS. This is the main
intention of our proposed use of strategy maps and questionnaires. The insight-action factors
deserve further work to establish good examples of how they can be handled in order to make
IS use more satisfying, efficient and effective.
13
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