eThesis - School of Business electronic theses

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The main objective of this study is to identify and describe the ways in which companies approach implementing inter-organizational software functionalities into their software products and services and to identify the factors that affect their choice of a software implementation strategy.

The study is a descriptive multiple case study that focuses on four companies that are all doing a similar XBRL functionality implementation at the same time. The theoretical framework of the study consists of multiple factors, out of which network effect and path dependence are the most prominent theories that are used to guide the case study design. The reviewed literature categorizes software implementation strategies according to how deeply the new functionality is integrated into existing systems, categorizing software implementations into bolt-on, built-in, and deeply embedded implementation strategies. The findings from the case study indicate support for this kind of categorization in the observed cases, although the categories should be considered to be more of a continuum than set of discrete classes.

The results of the case study also indicate that, in the cases that were observed, network effects and path dependence play a role in the software implementation strategy selection but a significant factor in the implementation strategy decisions is also the uncertainty of the future adoption, development, and use of the technology in question. In an inter-organizational context, companies weigh in the perceived benefits of a software implementation against their confidence in the future use of that technology, forming an estimate of the expected value of the future benefit of the software implementation. This expected value will then in turn factor into the software implementation strategy decision and partly contribute to how deeply the company is willing to integrate the functionality into their existing systems.