Managers In The Innovation And Implementation Of Information Systems Impact Study

At the information age full of transforms and challenges, more and more enterprises carry innovations through their manufactures, productions, or services in order to improve competition. A lot of enterprises adopt information system innovations such as management information system (MIS), total quality management (TQM), enterprise resource planning (ERP) et al. Through IS innovations, they want to reengineer business process, reduce operating cost, and improve decision-making level et al. for winning competitive advantages. Though many research literatures consider that some organization's failure to achieve the intended benefits of an innovation it has adopted may thus reflect either a failure of implementation or a failure of the innovation itself. Increasingly, researchers and analysts identify implementation failure, not innovation failure, as the cause of many organizations' inability to achieve the intended benefits of the innovations they adopt. A lot of scholars focus much on study of innovation adoption or premise model of IS innovation adoption and few on study of after innovation adoption or study of innovation implementation, which is the incentive of this dissertation to discuss innovation implementation. Accordingly, study of innovation implementation is of theoretical significance and practical value.A lot of enterprises are confronted with many difficulties and challenges during the course of innovation implementation. Managerial problems, not technical problems, are deemed to the most common reason of implementation failure. The information system implementation is not only a project of "the top manager", but also a project of "layer upon layer managers". The affecting role of managers is very important and managers' influence is the critical factor. However, there are few in-depth discussions and studies of managers' influence on innovation implementation process or implementation effect. Based of innovation implementation theories, research models and interrelated managers' influence literatures, focusing on IS innovation implementation process, and from the two angles of views with leader style and manage support, the dissertation discusses and studies the influencing mechanism and role of the top managers and direct managers on innovation implementation effect.Based on reflections of a large enterprise's ERP implementation participation and in-depth interviews of 14 enterprises, and using large-scale questionnaire survey methods, the paper studies the IS innovation implementation and managers' influence with empirical data. Some methods such as factor analysis, multivariate analysis of variance, linear regression analysis et al are used to test the main effect, moderator effect and mediator effect hypothesis which the research model includes. Through the theoretical analysis and survey research, the dissertation has gotten the main contribution and results as following:1. Study on innovation implementation effect modelThe study supplements and demonstrates innovation implementation model and qualitative research results which Klein and Sorra put forward in 1996. Besides, the study brings forward the effects of climate strength and personal character's variables, which help to in-depth analyze the innovation implementation model and perfect implementation research. Providing some uses for references and directions, these results include:1) Basing on analysis of individual lay, innovation implementation climate and innovation value fit are demonstrated as the statistically significant premise variables of implementation effect. Positive implementation climate can facilitate use effect by establishing employees' perception and adoption of innovation implementation importance. Through the variable of innovation value fit, employees recognize the innovation fit with their work request or values and accordingly they can be inherent or committed to innovation use.2) At the base of in-depth studying of the innovation implementation and climate theoretical research, t he paper analyzes the notion of climate and brings forward four kinds of organizational climates from two dimensions: positive / negative climate effect and strong / weak climate strength. Different climate perceptions have different impact on implementation effect. Establishing and cultivating a positive and strong organizational climate is critical to enterprises' successful innovation implementation. Climate strength has a moderating effect on the relation of implementation climate and implementation effect.3) The influence of personal character diversity (personal innovativeness and skill) on innovation use is analyzed. Personal innovativeness has a moderating effect on the relation of implementation climate and implementation effect, namely if at the same climate perception, the higher is personal innovativeness, the higher is innovation use effect. Skills have the significant mediating effect, not the moderating effect, on the relation of implementation climate and implementation effect, which indicates employee's skills should be improved to foster innovation implementation effect. Implementation climate affect implementation effect directly and indirectly by skills variable.2. Study on the relation of leadership style and innovation implementationFrom a leadership style view, managers' influence on innovation implementation effect is analyzed and investigated. The study enriches the theories of transformational leadership and innovation implementation, supplements relatively blank fields of the two theories intercross research, and provides the reference of study on the transformational and transactional leadership influent role of innovation implementation. The main results are:1) Based on transformation leadership theory, transformational and transactional leadership styles of top manager (responsibility of implementation project) and direct managers are analyzed and distinguished. The study considers that transformational leadership behavior of top and direct managers can significantly promote implementation climate and improve employees' perceptions of innovation value fit to enhance implementation effect.2) There are no significant influences of top and direct managers' transactional leadership style on implementation climate. Compare relatively to transactional leadership, the transformational leadership has the "augment" influent role. 3. Study on relation of management support and innovation implementationAnalyzing the relation of managers' influence and implementation effect from the management support viewing, the research enriches the management support theories and gives some suggestions and references for studying and explaining the role of management support on IS implementation effect. The main results are the following:1) Management support of top and direct managers can significantly engender positive implementation climate, which leads in turn to implementation success. Implementation climate has the significant mediating effect in relation of management support and implementation effect. Direct managers has the much more effect than that of top managers, and accordingly not only the top managers' support but also direct managers' support are needed to promote positive implementation climate and facitate successful implementation course. The direct managers' support significantly affects innovation value fit and the significant mediating effect of innovation value fit is proofed, however, the significant influence of top managers' support on innovation value fit are not found.2) In-depth studying on the meaning of management support, the paper puts forward and distinguishes the concept of management support which covers two level meanings: management involvement and management participation. At the effect of implementation climate and innovation value fit, management involvement has the much more significant role than that of management participation. Management involvement has the significant mediating effect. At the process of IS innovation implementation, managers' participation significantly affects their involvement, and in turn has the influent role on implementation and innovation value fit.The research spreads at the individual level and uses the method of MANOVA to analyze how the sample's population and background variables affect the research model. The results shows that the differences of individual gender, educational level, work position, and work experience have no significant distinction on the research variables and so is the adopted innovation software type. There are some significant distinctions of the company's character role on such research variables as implementation climate, management support, leadership style, but not on the dependent variable - implementation effect.