Participative design: linking BPR and SAP with an STS approach

The decades‐old paradox of great software promise and its disappointing practice in organizations has been recently increased by the appearance of “enterprise‐wide” systems (often called “enterprise resource planning” or ERP). Obtaining effective user involvement has been problematic in the past and it promises to become worse in the future with larger, more comprehensive software applications. Business process re‐engineering (BPR) adds to this significant problem by exhorting managers to undertake massive change ‐ including new information systems ‐ using autocratic methods. The confluence of management interest in organization change and in new technology has excited the global industrial community, but it has also disappointed in delivering on its promise. Sociotechnical systems (STS) design combines user‐involvement in design with structural change and the effective use of technology. The present paper explores the successful application of STS, with its local participation in organization design, to a centralized and autocratic application of BPR and SAP enterprise‐wide software.