The thesis that rankings do more than just make visible an organization’s position viz-á-viz a competitor, but stimulate new competitive rivalries, has provoked much interest. Yet, to date, scholars lack an understanding of how such competitive rivalries unfold at the level of organizational...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore conceptual issues arising in an empirical study of the emergence of a distinctive new form of expertise – of industry analysts and in particular the leading firm Gartner Group that exercises enormous influence over the Information Technology...

chapter Introduction: The reshaping of the modern enterprise solution -- chapter 1 The dynamics of software packages -- chapter 2 Critique of existing knowledge -- chapter 3 The Biography of Artefacts Framework -- chapter 4 Fitting standard software to non-standard organisations -- chapter 5...

Scholars have described how rankings can be consequential for the shaping of the economy. The prevailing argument is that they wield influence through encouraging ‘mechanisms of reactivity’ amongst market actors. We ask the question as to whether there are additional agential aspects found...

How does one of the world’s biggest Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) suppliers develop software? How do Oracle, SAP, Microsoft and Co really work? Christine Grimm presents a first-hand account of a social researcher who entered the software laboratory of one of the biggest ERP providers....

Purpose Digital technologies, digitalised consumers and the torrent of customer data have been transforming marketing practice. In discussing such trends, existing research has either focussed on the skills marketers need or broad-based approaches such as agile methods but has given less...

This article investigates the take-up by universities of enterprise-wide computer systems and the development of a new module for the management and administration of students. Having its origins in Electronic Commerce, the system assumes the existence of a certain kind of user, one with...