Abstract With the case study MetroEngineers, Sarah Langer, Ronny Gey, Diana Karadzhova-Beyer, and Andrea Fried highlight organizational deviance from standards in the software development of a service engineering company for rail vehicles called MetroEngineers. Despite the initial intention to develop software according to European standards, the case study explains the reasons why the software developers deviate from standards nonetheless. First, software development at MetroEngineers is provided for a Chinese market which is hardly regulated through standards. Deviations from standards are therefore hardly sanctioned, but even MetroEngineers itself has not established an adequate internal sanctioning system for standard deviations. Second, MetroEngineers’ software developers lack allocative and authoritative resources for standard enactment and a lively internal discourse on the importance of standard-compliant development involving middle management and the customer. This means that software developers are ambitiously trying to develop in accordance with European standards, but ultimately fail to overcome the various contradictions that arise in standard enactment. This chapter represents one of the two manipulation-oriented types of organizational deviance introduced in the book.

Abstract This chapter presents a case of a medical technology company where standards have already shaped software development processes for a long time. Ronny Gey, Sarah Langer, and Andrea Fried reflect here on how MedTech’s organizational members over-conform with standards. In contrast to CraneSolutions in the previous chapter, productive asymmetries and even contradictions were hardly found in standard enactment at MedTech. MedTech provides adequate allocative and authoritative resources for standardization, refers to strong internal and external sanctioning systems for standard deviations, but hardly reflects on the internal effects of standards on software development. The case described in this chapter delivers an explanation why over-commitment of organizational members to standards tends to reinforce organizational inertia and shows the importance of reflexive handling of standard-induced requirements within the organization. This chapter represents one of the two commitment-oriented types of organizational deviance introduced in the book.

In this chapter, Sarah Langer, Ronny Gey, and Diana Karadzhova-Beyer introduce how empirical investigations of organizational deviations from standards can be conceptualized. They suggest a focused ethnography approach to explore the organizational members’ view on the enactment of standards. The applied research strategy includes qualitative interviews, field observations, diaries, the analysis of documents, and questionnaires. The authors present the studies’ empirical premises and the sampling approach, as well as the process of data gathering and analysis. The chapter prepares methodological ground for the case studies CraneSolutions, MedTech, and MetroEngineers. In this way, the authors also provide guidelines and lessons learned, for instance, for replication studies on organizational deviance from standards in other industrial sectors, for other standards, and for the non-profit sector.

In this chapter, Ronny Gey, Sarah Langer, and Andrea Fried draw attention to the actual enactment of standards in organizations. They describe a software developing project of the crane manufacturer CraneSolutions which is confronted with a situation where no standards are directly suitable for its niche products. The case of CraneSolutions is a striking example of mainly attentive deviance from standards. The chapter analyses how the organization succeeds in committing to standards while deviating from them attentively. Based on a structurationist framework, the analysis of CraneSolutions enables understanding of the enactment of standards as represented in the interpretative schemes, the facilities, and the social norms of the organization. Moreover, the authors explain organizational deviance from standards as a way of how organizations deal effectively with emerging asymmetries and contradictions during the enactment of standards. This chapter represents one of the two commitment-oriented types of organizational deviance introduced in the book.

This chapter focusses on the appearance and implementation of process standards in software development organizations. The authors are interested in the way organizations handle the plurality of process standards. Organizations respond by metastructuring to the increasing demand for standardizing their development processes. Standards metastructuring summarizes all organizational mechanisms for facilitating the ongoing adaption of global standards to the organizational context. Based on an in-depth single case study of a software developing organization in the automotive technology sector, the authors found four areas of metastructuring, four roles for standard mediation, and four types of metastructuring activities. With the case study, they encourage further research that proves standards in use and how organizations respond to the challenges of standardization.

In this paper we are interested in organizations as recipients of standards and question how standards are enacted in their daily practice. The aim of the paper is to develop a practice lens on standards to gain knowledge about the use of standards. To understand recent critical deviances from standards in several industries better, we suggest to investigate the interplay of legitimation, signification and domination during the enactment of standards within organizations. Based on the structuration theory (Giddens, 1984) and the enactment approach (Weick, 1988), we develop a heuristic framework for the analysis of standards as practice. We deliver qualitative, ethnographic insights from ongoing empirical research on the enactment of standards in a railway vehicle engineering company which is engaged in a metro development project for a Chinese client. We could retrace 28 metaphors for standards in the empirical data describing how standards appear in the daily practice. Our empirical investigations reveal that legitimation, signification and domination are intertwined during the enactment of standards. Furthermore, the interaction of legitimation, signification and domination induces three organizational tensions: (1) divergent interests for standard compliance, (2) blurred responsibilities for standard compliance, and (3) the drift between the internal significance of standards and the available resources. We trust that depending on how organizations solve these tensions it will have an influence on the organizational deviance from or compliance with standards and finally a crucial impact on human health, safety or environmental protection.

Certification matters - competition of market, rational-bureaucratic and professional logics in software development organisations

In the paper we show the development of the Music Business Ontology (MBO). The MBO was developed in reaction to problems towards data and communication in the music industry. Based on a qualitative pre-study we analyzed the music industry, its players and data and software in use. First, we identified typical services and data formats. Consequently, we extracted concepts and properties from the music business. The development of software tools for the music business serving well-defined tasks followed the design of the ontology. As a result, the MBO increases transparency of the music business as well as it serves for a better understanding of the music business itself among its actors. The introduction of the Music Business Ontology changes the way actors and systems in the music business interact with each other. It decreases the need for different interfaces and formats and thus considerably reduces complexity.

In the paper we show the development of the Music Business Ontology (MBO). The MBO was developed in reaction to problems towards data and communication in the music industry. Based on a qualitative pre-study we analyzed the music industry, its players and data and software in use. First, we identified typical services and data formats. Consequently, we extracted concepts and properties from the music business. The development of software tools for the music business serving well-defined tasks followed the design of the ontology. As a result, the MBO increases transparency of the music business as well as it serves for a better understanding of the music business itself among its actors. The introduction of the Music Business Ontology changes the way actors and systems in the music business interact with each other. It decreases the need for different interfaces and formats and thus considerably reduces complexity.

This paper focuses on the appearance and implementation of process standards in software development organizations. In particular, it shows interest in the way organizations handle the plurality and multitude of process standards they are faced with in a modern working environment. The process how organizations respond to environmental challenges like the increasing demand for process standards we call metastructuring. Based on the metastructuring approach by Orlikowski et al. (1995) it explores the process of internal standard-use mediation by an in-depth single case study. The case company develops step by step a dedicated institutional entity reacting to standard complexity and customer pressure. As a result, mediators shape extensively the standard use of the employees in the case company. They develop a process library which integrates different standards. This work sheds light on how this metastructuring process is accomplished, which areas of metastructuring regarding process standards can be found and explore different types of metastructuring activities by the involved standard-use mediators.

In management control literature, managerial problems are often addressed to a failed implementation procedure of management control systems. Typically, there are three reasons on the employee side given why the implementation could not be executed appropriately (Anthony and Govindarajan 2007; Merchant and Van der Stede 2011): First, there is a lack of direction for employees during the implementation process being identified. This can presumably lead to a lack of understanding of drivers that are applied to the employee’s job. Second, there is a motivational problem being specified due to the incongruence of individual and organizational objectives, effort aversion, self-interested and manipulative behavior of employees. Third, ability limitations of employees like the lack of aptitude, training, and experience are seen as limitations for a successful implementation of management control systems. On the managerial side mainly the following reasons are

The paper explores process management standards in software development organisations. It centres on the question how organisations manage the compliance with process standards as well as the need for ongoing technical innovation at the same time. It refers to former studies where it was concluded that process management standards tend to crowd out technical innovations in organisations. By reconsidering the coupling approach of Orton and Weick (1990) we show based on four case studies that it does not apply to those organisations which allow innovating activities being loosely coupled or decoupled from the reigning standard script. These organisations sustain their chances for incremental and fundamental technical innovations. Dealing with loosely coupled or decoupled innovating activities implies a dialectical standard management. It means that potentially contradictory and conflict-ridden activities like standardised practices and innovating activities are manageable by specific institutional, temporarily limited and formal/informal solutions. Furthermore, we scrutinise in this paper the decoupling discussion of some parts of the standard management literature. Standard decoupling is often seen as an unfortunate, but necessary solution to cope with external pressure for internal standardisation. In contrast to this, we develop an understanding where standard decoupling is not defined as a set of activities without affecting the 'technical core' of an organisation. (Brunsson and Jacobsson, 2000b; Meyer and Rowan, 1967). Rather, decoupling is seen as a temporary and locally limited situation of an innovating subsystem within an organisation where it is allowed to detach from reigning standardised practices and to test and develop innovative ideas under less formalised conditions.

The paper reports on preliminary results of a research project which explores empirically the relationship between standardization and innovation. The focus lies on the implementation of standards as a subject in the research area of technology and organizing. We show that differences in the appropriation of a standardization approach, namely the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI), can occur and thus influence the latter use of the standard in the organisation. The practical localization of standardization in this paper is derived from standards towards software process improvement (SPI). In general process improvement models aim at the introduction of effective processes and their continuous improvement. CMMI was selected as a prominent example of a SPI standard. A differing use of SPI in contrast to what was intended by the SPI designer is meant to be a major influence factor for how innovative capabilities are generated. For our empirical investigations we used a qualitative and explorative approach. Therefore organizations from different industry sectors and from different countries were selected. A semi-structured questionnaire was used to analyse occurrences of innovation before and after the implementation of CMMI. Analysis of data results in a single case study for each organization. Based on our ongoing study first results show direct coherence between the general understanding and acceptance of CMMI and its implementation as an approach to software process improvement. The data shows that companies which interpret, implement and further utilize CMMI as mere standard struggle with the daily use of it. CMMI was implemented differently than intended by its designers. This affects the motivation and probability to obtain a recertification or even to ascent the maturity level. In contradiction, companies which focused on the process improvement aspect of CMMI rather than following constrainedly and blindfolded what is supposed to be the standard reported a continuous use of CMMI as SPI model.

Emancipation from standards –Process management in software development and its influence on technical innovations

Over the past few years IT offshoring has become one of the most important corporate strategies in the software industry and is facing a diversity of challenges. One of them is the efficient transfer of knowledge between two companies, separated significantly in terms of time zone, geographical and cultural distance. Cultural aspects hence represent one of the most critical elements. While considering the software development process, requirements engineering is one of the most critical steps and implies an immense communication effort. When now the cross-cultural layer is added it seems to be a hardly solvable task. However, actual research on this section of knowledge transfer within offshore software development under cross-cultural settings is still limited. This is a research in progress paper using a qualitative research setting carried out with an explanatory case study involving the software requirements specification (SRS) as the knowledge to be transferred between IT companies in Germany and India. The basis of this paper is that, for the start of successful transfer of knowledge we suggest the storytelling methodology as a suitable tool to overcome these difficulties. Thus we are asking, how storytelling affects the inception of knowledge transfer in offshore software development projects.