Product details

This is the first of a two-case series (497-033-1 and 497-034-1). It examines some of the implementation issues that accompanied the introduction of a new, expensive, and highly sophisticated IT system (called a HISS) in an NHS hospital. The events related in the cases took place over the period 1989-1996. The data for the cases were collected by a single researcher (the author) over a period of several years. The case relates the origins of the HISS project in the case study hospital, and recounts the implementation team''s general strategy. It suggests that the team employed a sort of niche marketing campaign in order to manage and manipulate key stakeholders'' understanding of the HISS. The case is specifically designed to allow instructors to surface issues of power, politics, interest groups, conflict, resistance, and legitimacy, and to relate them to processes of change. The case may also be used to focus on some aspects of impression management, and non-traditional uses of the ''marketing concept'' internal to organisations. The case concludes in mid 1994 at a time when Phase 1 of the project was still to be completed, and the threat of a National Audit loomed large. At this time it seemed possible that the project might come to be defined as a success by the National Audit Office. Events post-1994 are related in Case 2 (497-034-1).