Information Technology Implementation Barriers and Coping Strategies - Article Example

Review of “AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION INTO THE LINE BETWEEN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IMPLEMENTATION BARRIERS AND COPING STRATEGIES IN THE AUSTRALIAN CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY” Abdulaziz fawaz aldawish Griffith School of Engineering, Griffith University, Gold Coast, QLD4222, Australia This is a review of “An Empirical Investigation Into The Link Between Information Technology Implementation Barriers and Coping Strategies In the Australian Construction Industry”. According to the research, the implementation of Information Technology (IT) is extreme importance in the development of an industry. But despite this fact, studies have shown that the Australian construction industry has been slow to implement to advancements in information technology. The paper looks into the barriers that keep the construction industry from implementing IT by using survey results from professionals to identify the most critical barriers in IT implementation. Keywords: industry, construction, information technology, barriers 1. The Research Context The context of the research is the Australian construction industry. According to the authors the rise of Information Technology (IT) has been slow for the construction industry in contrast to the other industries. The authors also stated in their research that the structure and culture of the industry has been affected by several historical, industrial and market factors which led to the current trend in the adoption of information technology in businesses. According to the research, the building and construction industry in Australia contributes the largest to employment with an estimated 158,000 firms employing an average of 2.3 employees for constructors. Meanwhile, Rodney A. Stewart is of the view thatthese assessments are all very specifically done and there are 46,000 architectural firms employ a mean 4.6 employees. Rodney A. Stewart finds out that while 4,600 engineering consultants employ a mean 5.6 employees there can be 3,700 engineering consultants employ a mean 5.6 employees . This has resulted in hundreds off organizations, with a small number of industry leaders thus resulting in a lack of strategic IT implementation. 2. The Literature Review 2.1 Barriers to effective IT implementation In conducting the research, the authors looked into previous studies regarding the barriers to effective IT implementation and categorised the problems they have identified into three tiers. It has been noted by the authors in the research, which at all tiers numerous problems that served as barriers were identified. It has also been observed that most of the problems were related to the industries' competitive nature, and the multitude of small organisations lacking in effective leadership. 2.1.1 Industry level Barriers encountered in industry level according to literature were related to ineffective organisational leadership. The problems were related low level of IT awareness, ill informed organisations and above all the fragmented nature of the industry. The other features were lack of leadership by clients, poor inter-operability within the industry and low profit margins (Love et al., 1996). The affects were made worse by the increasing costs with the IT applications and there was this cyclical variation in the workload within the industry. 2.1.2 Organisational level In the organizational level there were very minimal amount of resources made available for small and medium enterprises. There was a concrete reluctance seen in the managerial sector for innovation experiments with severe lack of IT strategic planning. All kinds of business practices were conservative in nature and there was the lack of perception for return on investment. The organizational sector was also having the resistance to change by staff. 2.1.3 Project level For the project level, the authors have identified that the barriers to IT implementation were related to the time constraints on the employees. The problems were: tight project time frames, low technology literacy of some participants, and limited expenditure on projects. 2.2Coping strategies Together with identifying barriers to effective IT implementation, the authors also identified several coping strategies using the tiered approach. 2.2.1 Industry level According to the authors, in order to overcome circumvent barriers to IT implementation, change must happen in the industry level. Coping strategies for the industry level identified by the authors were: inform clients of the benefits of IT, use web based information systems. 2.2.2 Organisational level After implementation in the industry level, coping strategies must be used in the organisational level. Strategies identified by the authors were: develop an IT strategic plan with full support by senior management, and use downtime to train staff and upgrade their technologies. 2.2.3 Project level It was noted by the authors that the project level was a special case because they were detached from the structure of the organisation. To remedy the situation, the authors suggested appointing a project IT champion which who will help the staff in appreciating the usage of information technology. Other strategies identified were: setting strategic and technical direction, and encouraging more active involvement by the IT staff. 3. Research Methodology The methodology as has been adopted by the authors is absolutely on the basis of practical application. The chief target was to bring out the primary conditions and the refinement of well screed list of all the barriers. Then there is the well scrutinization of all the barriers and on the basis of their significance the rankings were done. A perfect questionnaire was constructed to get all the information with all specification. The questionnaire was a survey respondents and the IT portfolio of their organisation. The survey was done among 520 professionals in the specialized sectors of Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry. Government project managers were also made a part of this survey. It is here that the linking barriers to the coping strategies were discovered. The authors used the means for the establishment of the effectiveness and practicality of coping strategies. In order to discover the status of Australian consultants and construction contracting personnel; all he analysis were done with a clear demarcation on the basis of business type profile of all the respondents. As a matter of fact, the whole survey covered a wider range of professionals, like Principal Engineer/ Director/ Department Head, Site Engineer/Project Manager, Design Engineer, Architect, HRM/ Finance/ Administration officer, IT professional and others. The results were balanced and 27% were only rated as positive. This was the basis for all the guidelines that were derived for a perfect IT implementation in the organisational and industrial sector. 4. Data collection and Presentation After collecting all the information, the authors made a very clear presentation of the whole scenario. This was the wider perspective and a detailed analytical presentation of the collected data. The survey was done with a range of 94% of professionals from private AEC industry. The rest 6% were the government and quasi-government AEC professionals. The distributions of professionals were into 5 categories, each determined as per the choices and the declarations made in the questionnaire. A detailed analysis over the detail what IT applications and tools were made. These tools and applications were Internet; e-mail, Local Area Network, Wide Area Network, Web-Based Project Management Application, Video conferencing; and On-line remote network. It has been discovered that all the participants embraced basic IT applications e-mail and the Internet use was counted as cent percent. However the application of LANs was 77% WAN was 37%, WBPMA was 35%, video conferencing 23% and On-line remote networks was 26%. The absolute purpose was after all to get concerned with the identification of the availability of certain IT based technologies in the professional sector of working. The discoveries were made towards the role played by IT in managing project for the functionality of communication and information. The analysis was just perfect to get the significant barriers to IT implementation. The authors then made a presentation related to the declaration on the basis of a scale of one to five. There were 8 industry level barriers that were enlisted as A-H. This was totally for a short-term view made by industrial practitioners (R.A. Stewart, et.al., 2004). In the rating process as per the significance that they bored the category of Cost driven and/or ill informed client organisations were at the top with 3.48 points in the scale of 1 to 5. Poor inter-operability between different applications/ organisations was rated 3.46, High cost associated with IT applications was 3.45, Lack of leadership by major client organisations was 2.96 and Cyclical variations in workload activity levels was rated as 2.71. The next derivation was related to six organisation level barriers, which again presented with a labelled state of A-F. In this speculation the strategical outcomes are significantly noticed. The collection of appropriate data was done with all kinds of research and the next level was sorted out. The mean significance scores as has been made by Sherif Mohamed, for the six project level barriers fro A-F was well scrutinised. The result was that Tight project timeframes inhibit training and experimenting with IT got rated as high as 4.00, being the most significant barrier, was at the top of the rating list. Love, P.E.D. discusses about the limited resources available to small and medium enterprises were with 3.96 points in 1-5 scale. Lack of perceived return on investment of IT expenditure was 3.77, Conservative business practices was rated 3.02 and Resistance to change by staff was discovered to be 3.00. Fear of change and uncertainty by some project participants was at the lower of 2.95 points in the rating scale. The attempts were made to bring up a link between IT barriers to the level of coping with the strategies. This was declared in three specific categories of Industry level, Organisational level and Project level. All the declarations of data as has been collected are made very clear through table formats and there is no doubt of not being comprehensible. In the Industry level 2 coping strategies were suggested. These are the means to develop tertiary/professional development courses in order to raise awareness of IT opportunities in every industrial level. The next suggestion is about obtaining industry agreements on software types and thereby having the upgrade timing to ensure improved interoperability. In case of Organisational level the coping strategies were all related to the educational implementation of the IT sector. The idea was to educate all the organisational managers. Though the application of it is very much tough in the operating constraints of the construction industry, yet the back up with IT corporate management can very easily implement the applications. In the Project level, Love, P.E.D. suggests about the coping strategies of CS1 and CS2 discovered to be practical and effective for passing over the barriers. The technical support was inevitable and it resulted in the involvement IT staff with construction projects. The coping strategies also included the state to ensure of on-line firewalls/security. The next strategy was to develop al sorts of methods to evaluate the benefits of IT investments. 5. Avenues for Further Work The initiation led by R.A. Stewart1, S. Mohamed2 and M. Marosszeky3 were the paving ways for many future perspective studies on this particular field. The means are all related to the corresponding coping strategies that are being well considered by the authors. The suggestions are all made with futuristic approaches and there is no space for any kind of hurdles for the upcoming competitiveness of the market in the industry, organisational and project level of implementation. The perspective has been developed in order to give better futuristic stand point and that is done through the analytical and inspectional proceedings. The most dominant openings were related to the top management commitment that needs to be established and maintained well enough. It is something that was led emphasis for maintenance to be initiated throughout the IT project. The next futuristic approach was done for appropriately adequate budgets that are significantly allocated for IT endeavours. The purpose of this is to affirm the effectiveness in the implementation. This is equally concerned about the long-term utilisation and sustainability of the same. The new horizons were decided for the implementation of IT-induced changes in the industrial, organisational and project maintenance sector. The implementations were all well created and adequately planned with all sorts of progressive manner. appendix IT - Information technology (IT), as defined by the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), is "the study, design, development, implementation, support or management of computer-based information systems, particularly software applications and computer hardware." IT deals with the use of electronic computers and computer software to convert, store, protect, process, transmit, and securely retrieve information. AEC - Architecture, Engineering and Construction LAN - A 'area network' is a computer network covering a small geographic area, like a home, office, or group of buildings e.g. a school. The defining characteristics of LANs in contrast to wide-area networks (WANs), include their much higher data-transfer rates, smaller geographic range, and lack of a need for leased telecommunication lines. WAN - Wide Area Network (WAN) is a computer network that covers a broad area (i.e., any network whose communications links cross metropolitan, regional, or national boundaries). Or, less formally, a network that uses routers and public communications links. Contrast with personal area networks (PANs), local area networks (LANs), campus area networks (CANs), or metropolitan area networks (MANs) which are usually limited to a room, building, campus or specific metropolitan area (e.g., a city) respectively. The largest and most well-known example of a WAN is the Internet. HRM - Human resource management (HRM) is the strategic and coherent approach to the management of an organization's most valued assets - the people working there who individually and collectively contribute to the achievement of the objectives of the business.The terms "human resource management" and "human resources" (HR) have largely replaced the term "personnel management" as a description of the processes involved in managing people in organizations. Human Resource management is evolving rapidly. Human resource management is both an academic theory and a business practice that addresses the theoretical and practical techniques of managing a workforce. References Love, P.E.D., MacSporran, C., Tucker, S.N., 1996, The application of information technology by Australian contractors: towards process reengineering, Proceedings of the International Group on Lean Construction (IGLC) 96, Fourth Annual Conference, Birmingham, August 26-27. Marton Marosszeky, Professor, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University ofNew South Wales, Sydney 2052, Australia R.A. Stewart, S. Mohamed and M. Marosszeky, “An empirical investigation into the link between information technology implementation barriers and coping strategies in the Australian construction industry”, Journal of Construction Innovation 4(3), 155-171 (2004). Rodney A. Stewart, Lecturer, School of Engineering, Griffith University, PMB 50 Gold Coast Mail Centre, Queensland 9726, Australia Sherif Mohamed, Associate Professor, School of Engineering, Griffith University, PMB 50 Gold Coast Mail Centre, Queensland 9726, Australia Read More