Critical Analysis of the Roles of Actors in the Deployment of Software

Critical Analysis of the Roles of Actors in the Deployment of Software

Tefo Sekgweleo (Department of Informatics, Tshwane University of Technology, Pretoria, South Africa)
Copyright: © 2015 |Pages: 18
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-8524-6.ch007
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Abstract

Many organizations resort to software deployment with the intention to simplify their daily activities, and for competitive advantage. The deployment consists of two main phases, development and implementation. Unfortunately, software doesn't always fulfil the organization's intentions. This is attributed to numerous factors, some of complex nature, which happen among humans, non-humans, and between humans and non-humans actors during development and implementation of software. Case study research was conducted to understand the roles of actors, and how their actions and interactions impact the development and implementation of software in the organization. Actor Network Theory (ANT) was employed in the analysis of the data. The theory focused on activities including the negotiation among actors which happened within heterogeneous network.
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2. Research Approach

The case study research method was employed in the research. According to Noor (2008:1602), a case study focuses on conducting an in-depth investigation into one or a few cases in order to gain a holistic insight about the phenomenon. The choice of the case study method was mainly because of the nature of the study, which required specific context of empirical enquiring. Parè (2004:233) defines a case study as “an empirical enquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context, especially when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident”.

The research was carried out in a South African financial institution, Bonolo Bank. The selection of the organization was based on three factors, namely, accessibility, proximity, and evidence of specialised unit for software development and implementation. The semi-structured interview approach was used for the data collection. A total of seventeen employees were interviewed over three months in 2011. The interviewees were conducted at different levels in both IT and Business units of the organization.

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