PARTICIPATIVE DESIGN - LINKING BPR AND SAP WITH AN STS APPROACH

The decades-old paradox of great software promise and its disappointin g practice in organizations has been recently increased by the appeara nce of ''enterprise-wide'' systems (often called ''enterprise resource planning'' or ERP). Obtaining effective user involvement has been pro blematic in the past and it promises to become worse in the future wit h larger, more comprehensive software applications. Business process r e-engineering (BPR) adds to this significant problem by exhorting mana gers to undertake massive change - including new information systems u sing autocratic methods. The confluence of management interest in orga nization change and in new technology has excited the global industria l community, but it has also disappointed in delivering on its promise . Sociotechnical systems (STS) design combines user-involvement in des ign with structural change and the effective use of technology. The pr esent 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.