Exploring Shared Services from an IS Perspective: A Literature Review and Research Agenda <s> Preparing for the analysis <s> We examined 155 information systems research articles published from 1983 to 1988 and found that although this research is not rooted in a single over-arching theoretical perspective, it does exhibit a single set of philosophical assumptions regarding the nature of the phenomena studied by information systems researchers, and what constitutes valid knowledge about those phenomena. We believe that a single research perspective for studying information systems phenomena is unnecessarily restrictive, and argue that there exist other philosophical assumptions that can inform studies of the relationships between information technology, people, and organizations. In this paper, we present two additional research philosophies for consideration-the interpretive and the critical-and for each we provide empirical examples to illustrate how they are used. We conclude by suggesting that much can be gained if a plurality of research perspectives is effectively employed to investigate information systems phenomena. <s> BIB001 </s> Exploring Shared Services from an IS Perspective: A Literature Review and Research Agenda <s> Preparing for the analysis <s> Throughout its history, the information systems (IS) discipline has engaged in extensive self-examination, particularly with regard to its apparent diversity. Our overall objective in this study is to better understand the diversity in IS research, and the extent to which diversity is universal across journals that publish IS research. We developed a classification system that comprises five key characteristics of diversity (reference discipline, level of analysis, topic, research approach, and research method) based on a review of prior literature. We then examined articles over a five-year period, from 1995 to 1999, in five journals acknowledged as the top journals of the field, at least in NorthAmerica.Analyses reveal considerable diversity in each of the key characteristics. Perhaps not surprisingly, the research approach used is more focused with most studies being conducted using hypothetico-deductive approaches, whereas reference discipline is perhaps the most diverse of the characteristics examined. An interesting finding is that IS itself emerged as a key reference discipline in the late 1990s. The Journal of Management Information Systems and Information Systems Research publish articles displaying the greatest diversity, and MIS Quarterly and Decision Sciences publish articles that focus on subsets of the field. Our research provides a foundation for addressing the direction that diversity in the IS discipline takes over time. In the shorter term, researchers can use our classification system as a guide to writing abstracts and selecting key words, and the findings of our journal analyses to determine the best outlet for their type of research. <s> BIB002 </s> Exploring Shared Services from an IS Perspective: A Literature Review and Research Agenda <s> Preparing for the analysis <s> Purpose – To reveal similarities between the business process reengineering (BPR) and shared service approaches, in order to improve outcomes of shared service implementation processes through lessons learnt from previous BPR projects.Design/methodology/approach – As the focus of this paper is primarily theoretical, the paper starts out with a literature review of developments in the BPR and shared service movements. Similarities between the two change alternatives are discussed and drawn up.Findings – The paper concludes by identifying which previously learnt lessons the emerging shared service movement should take into account from the BPR era when implementing shared services.Research limitations/implications – The paper is primarily based on previous findings from a literature review. To increase insights into the contemporary shared service phenomenon, complementary research in the form of in‐depth case studies are recommended.Practical implications – Based on the similarities between BPR and shared ... <s> BIB003 </s> Exploring Shared Services from an IS Perspective: A Literature Review and Research Agenda <s> Preparing for the analysis <s> Organisations are increasingly looking to realise the benefits of shared services yet there is little guidance available as to the best way to proceed. A framework is presented that considers the service provided, the design of the shared services centre and the organisational context it sits within. Case studies that examine the relevance of that framework and assess the performance of eleven shared services as a first step in determining what specific attributes of each dimension are important and how they should be aligned. It is concluded that there appears to be a single, broadly standard pattern of attributes for successful Shared Services Centres (SSCs). As fundamentals the SSC should aim to realise economies of scale by providing a broad range of transaction processing services using a standardised IT platform. Additional factors associated with successful SSCs include the SSC being held accountable for its results and there being an emphasis on managing the cultural change associated with the introduction of shared services. Beyond these core attributes a number of characteristics that potentially inhibit or facilitate the successful operation of SSCs have also been identified. <s> BIB004 </s> Exploring Shared Services from an IS Perspective: A Literature Review and Research Agenda <s> Preparing for the analysis <s> As businesses reconfigure their value chains and scale up their global expansions, they have to cope with a myriad of complex IT management challenges. This research examines how enterprises realign their global IT strategies for scale, speed, and innovation. Anchored in the IT governance literature, we seek to unravel the required governance structures and processes in balancing the inherent global-local tensions. Through field interviews with CIOs of global enterprises with established Asian presence, we derived a research framework for global IT management. Our findings suggest evolving global-regional-local structural elements in global IT organization supplemented by the institution of horizontal/linking mechanisms. Specifically, the key tension points appear to be in the flexible design of IT service delivery, the facilitation of IT innovation flow, and the nurturing of a global IT management mindset. <s> BIB005 </s> Exploring Shared Services from an IS Perspective: A Literature Review and Research Agenda <s> Preparing for the analysis <s> This working paper has been thoroughly revised and superseded by two distinct articles. The first is a revised and peer-reviewed version of the original article: Okoli, Chitu (2015), A Guide to Conducting a Standalone Systematic Literature Review. Communications of the Association for Information Systems (37:43), November 2015, pp. 879-910. This article presents a methodology for conducting a systematic literature review with many examples from IS research and references to guides with further helpful details. The article is available from Google Scholar or from the author's website. The second extension article focuses on developing theory with literature reviews: Okoli, Chitu (2015), The View from Giants’ Shoulders: Developing Theory with Theory-Mining Systematic Literature Reviews. SSRN Working Paper Series, December 8, 2015. This article identifies theory-mining reviews, which are literature reviews that extract and synthesize theoretical concepts from the source primary studies. The article demonstrates by citation analysis that, in information systems research, this kind of literature review is more highly cited than other kinds of literature review. The article provides detailed guidelines to writing a high-quality theory-mining review. <s> BIB006
A protocol was devised that articulated the analysis procedures and related preparations. The protocol included a pre-codification scheme and guidelines on how to apply the tool (NVivo) to support the overall analysis. Pre-determining what is important to capture and report is a critical aspect for an effective and efficient archival analysis BIB006 . The goal of the study was to derive a synthesized review of shared services literature within IS academe. Hence, the pre-codification scheme was based on the basic questions of what, why, who and how for understanding shared services. We capture the 'what' and 'why' of shared services by addressing the definitions and objectives. We also analyzed and synthesized the 'who' and 'how 'by identifying the stakeholders and exploring the 'notion of sharing.' In addition, we addressed the research perspective by capturing the reported theoretical backgrounds and research methods. This is consistent with (1) past similar meta-literature-review papers [i.e.,  BIB001 BIB002 , (2) exemplar literature reviews in award winning IS dissertations 11 from which to identify and extract common themes reported in IS, and (3) a high level analysis of shared services publications based on an initial scan of most cited papers in the field BIB004  BIB005 BIB003 . The data for each of these topics were analyzed in different ways, depending on the kind of topic, what was reported in the identified IS literature, and other prior work that could support the analysis. The first round of analysis was done primarily in an inductive manner in search of emerging themes (adapting an open coding approach) -where content coded under a certain topic of the pre-coding scheme was analyzed in isolation and in depth. These themes 7 Some conferences do not have poster sessions in their proceedings. Such papers that might have been presented at a conference, but was not included in the proceedings were not included. 8 Extracted from http://home.aisnet.org/displaycommon.cfm?an=1&subarticlenbr=346. Last accessed April 8th, 2011. 9 Remaining sources refer to 40 IS Journals listed at the 'AIS webpage' and IS Journals ranked in the ERA ranking list. 10 Those papers that did not discuss shared services in a meaningful context were removed. Examples included papers that had the term shared services only mentioned once in passing, or it was a part of a title in the references list.