Editorial Preface
Abstract
Editor's Desk c, IT Systems Development and Deployment in M&A Post Implementation: The Challenge between Eastern and Western Organizational Cultures Barry Shore, Associate Editor, University of New Hampshire, USA bshore@unh.edu An ERP system in Germany is functionally similar to one in China, India or the United States. Inventory control, sales order processing, and supply chain management systems support the same tasks regardless of where in the world they occur; customers place orders, inventory is controlled, and suppliers deliver on time. So, at the technical level of these socio-technical systems, implementation across boarders should suffer few unexpected challenges (Capaldo, Raffa and Rippa, 2007). But it is social systems that have the potential to derail technical objectives. Processes are managed differently, people work differently and IT practices may unfold differently from one culture to another (Lu and Heng, 2009). Consider a merger or acquisition where the acquiring company is engaged in a project to harmonize or centralize information systems. From the technical perspective, we might expect that deployment of centralized IT applications should not prove to be an overwhelming technical challenge. We might also hypothesize that the transfer of technology should experience no direction bias. That is, a Western company should