Culture, environmental pressures, and the factors for successful implementation of business process engineering and computer-based information systems

The objective of the study is to identify the effect of culture and environmental pressures on the factors of successful implementation of Computer-Based Information Systems (CBIS)/ Business Process Reengineering (BPR) projects based on the experience and perception of chief information officers in India and in the U.S. about computerization/BPR projects in their organizations. For the organizations that have not been able to initiate such projects, the objective is to include the inhibiting factors so as to identify the relationships with culture and the environmental pressures. The findings suggest that environmental pressures and cultural factors play an important role in changing the mind-set of employees to facilitate the successful implementation of CBIS/BPR projects in India. In case of the United States based organizations, the culture plays an important role in facilitating the successful implementation of both CBIS/BPR projects. However, most of the environmental pressures were found having positive significant correlation with the severity in implementation of CBIS/BPR projects for US based organisations. For successful implementation of CBIS/BPR projects, the factors used are technological factor, managerial factor, human factor and user training, behavioral factor, project related factor, and government policy and support in the country. The culture is measured by using variables power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism, and masculinity. The environmental pressures are measured using variables frequency of changes in marketing practices, rate of product obsolescence, prediction of competitor's actions, prediction of consumer test/product demand, and frequency of changes in mode of production/services. In the comparative study between India and the United States, we have collected the quantitative data through a survey of chief information officers in India and the United States. This data has been analyzed by using the correlation analysis and validated by factor analysis and discriminant analysis.