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This interpretative case study demonstrates how the work system properties and roles of clinical departments are perceived to shape their adoption of an organisation-wide electronic health record. In hospitals, with their heterogeneous and powerful clinical departments, partial or non-adoption by some departments may jeopardise effective overall use. Viewing a hospital's EHR adoption from a sociotechnical fit perspective, we unravel how clinical departments' adoption of this organisation-wide system was primarily shaped by their critical work system dependencies rather than their role during its implementation. From the interviewees' accounts, three orientations emerge: (1) organisation-oriented resulting in unconditional adoption; (2) department-oriented resulting in problematic or delayed adoption with high compromise costs; (3) environment-oriented resulting in at least partial non-adoption or extra design costs. Our subsequent analysis leads to the identification of four types of subunit-level characteristics influencing adoption. Their interplay informs departments in balancing between accepting compromise costs and negotiating design costs. We develop a diagnostic system model of subunit-level adoption that takes the embeddedness of the subunit into account and thereby complements individual- and organisation-level adoption theories. An accompanying heuristic may enable hospital managers to better anticipate the heterogeneity in departments' adoption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although (the relevance of) stakeholder management receives considerable attention in literature, the problem of actual stakeholder identification is yet unresolved. This article analyses the potential contributions of critical systems thinking to solving this problem. Especially Ulrich's notion of boundary critique, by which he focuses on stakeholder roles and particularly the role of 'the affected', seems a fruitful contribution. By adapting the role definitions towards a project context, including project dynamics, and adding operating instructions, a method has been developed that can be used for actual stakeholder identification in organizational projects. This method is demonstrated on two projects. The results show that this adapted version of boundary critique, which in its original form mainly is used in the context of civil society, is also relevant in an organizational profit-based context. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Keywords system of stakeholders; stakeholder identification; stakeholder roles; critical systems thinking; actively and passively involved, INTRODUCTION Stakeholder involvement has become a topic of considerable attention, both in literature as in organizational practice. One of the still unresolved issues in stakeholder theory and stakeholder management is [...]

Byline: Marjolein C. Achterkamp, Janita F.J. Vos This article presents a framework that can serve as a first step towards managing stakeholder involvement in sustainable innovation projects. This framework is based on the questions of which stakeholders ought to be involved, in which phase of the innovation project, and how. The underlying idea is that stakeholder involvement serves two goals: to clarify the local criteria for sustainable outcomes, and to activate organisational practices according to these criteria. In the framework we combine a new perspective on sustainability, 'the reduction of offload', with the well-known Triple P-perspective, to designate certain types of stakeholders. These stakeholders should be consulted to clarify criteria for sustainable innovation. Active participation of organisational members in stakeholder involvement might lead to the commitment needed for the actual use of these criteria in different phases of the innovation process. In this way stakeholder involvement can also lead to organisational practices consistent with sustainability criteria.

Purpose – The management of stakeholder involvement within innovation projects is a task of growing importance. The purpose of this paper is to present a method for the first challenge in stakeholder management: the identification of those stakeholders to be involved in innovation projects. Design/methodology/approach – Analysis of stakeholder literature leads to the conclusion that stakeholder identification is considered a problem of classification. Although the availability of a classification model is necessary, it is argued that for a classification model to be of use in identifying stakeholders, such a model needs to be supplemented with an identification procedure for identifying real world parties. Furthermore, a classification model should fit the context the stakeholders are identified for, in this case for innovation projects. These insights have led to the development of a classification model fitting the innovation context, and to the embedding of this model, along with a matching identification procedure, in an identification method. Findings – A partial and integral evaluation of the method on four cases showed its efficacy in the managerial practice of identifying stakeholders within innovation projects. Originality/value – The method as proposed in the paper can be used for identifying stakeholders in innovation projects. The method can be considered a first step in managing stakeholder involvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]