The Observatory on Borderless Higher Education (subscription service) report on Implications of Enterprise Resource Planning Systems for Universities: An analysis of Benefits and Risks has just been released (issue 30, April 2005) and it needs to go straight on to the essential reading list. The authors Neil Pollock, University of Edinburgh and James Cornford, University of Newcastle upon Tyne are both respected authors in their field so we would be wise to pay attention to what they have to say. Some of the arguments in the OBHE report can also be found in James Cornford's earlier 2000 paper The Virtual University is (paradoxically) the University Made Concrete, but the arguments are even more relevant today.
If I was to summarize the OBHE paper in a sentence it would be as follows.
The introduction of enterprise class management systems into a university tends to result in the institution adapting to the needs of the technology, not vice versa. Or in the language of the report:
“… universities may be increasingly forced to consider institutional changes in order to maintain alignment with the system.” (p13)
Anyone looking for examples of technological determinism?
The OBHE reports seems to indicate that quite draconian expensive and high risk organizational changes can be imposed just so that a 'fit' can be created with whatever system is chosen. Although the OBHE report was focusing on ERP systems on page 14 we find reference to other related systems:
“In terms of overall shaping of universities we found that the adoption of ERP (and other ICTs) does not appear to be favouring the desired enterprise model. Rather they seem to be reinforcing the establishment of a more … corporate form of organisation where both policy formation and policy implementation are far tighter and goals, roles, identities, abstract rules and standard operating procedures are made explicit and formalised. This had a number of implications througout the university in terms of local flexibility and control.”
In my earlier post, Be afraid … be very afraid! (1), I attempted to express my increasing concern with the lemming-like behaviour of institutions which lock themselves into proprietary enterprise class VLEs and then proceed to link with like minded entities, with the whole state of Connecticut in the US undoubtedly providing the uber example of this tendency. So within the OBHE report we find the following, which has done little to reassure me it will all turn out ok in the end:
“… in order to exert pressure on suppliers to build specific modules, institutions have little choice but to procure software as a 'community' or 'sector'. In so doing, adopters will have to negotiate and struggle both with the supplier and with other higher education institutions … These pressures are described as sometimes leading to what organisational sociologists call 'institutional isomorphism' “. (page 13)
When reading the above just substitute ERP systems for MLEs/VLEs/LMSs
To put it in the language of my earlier articles on this theme we end up creating a monoculture. When we eventually wake up the reversal will be horrendously expensive and very very traumatic. And if you've got nascent plans to 'evolve' away from your current enterprise system there are many many interests who can, and will, directly or indirectly impede this.
