| dc.description.abstract | Customer relationship management (CRM), as an opposite of transactional approach (e.g., mass marketing), is commonly referred to as the new paradigm for doing marketing. Unfortunately, over half of all CRM implementations do not produce expected results and only reflect ceremonial adoption of said systems without buying into their real value. This study looks at organizational institutions by recognizing their capacity in supporting and providing necessary stability for change.
Using an interpretive case study within the context of Taiwan’s retailer market, this study will investigate how micro, organizational institutions enable and restrict the deployment of a CRM practice. By observing and analyzing existing institutional environments, this study shows how existing institutions may be incompatible and conflict with the rules embodied in CRM practices, thus impeding the internalization of the value and spirit of the CRM. Interview, informal observation, and secondary data for this interpretative study were acquired during 2004 from a Taiwanese 3C retailer.
The results show while the CRM system at case company may have qualified as a well built system, and the CRM users have no difficult in use it, the CRM artifact however did not create significant contribution and organizational outcomes to the company. Because the company’s existing institutional logic and the logic underlying the “CRM practices” were conflict, the CRM technology diffused less rapidly than expected in the case company. In the case of institutional-conflicts, the case company’s managers and employees lack social and economic motivation to engage the efforts to explore and exploit customer knowledge from the system. Consequently, a paradigm shift had yet occurred within the case company and the CRM deployment only as a ceremonial adoption. By emphasizing on the legitimate accounts of institutions, the institutional-conflicts lens explains why with technical feasibility the benefits of an artifact are still rarely fulfilled.
This study recognizes that to adopt an artifact, the effectiveness of the adoption is determined by whether the artifact can become institutions, which means the rules of the artifact should be institutionalized as the rules of the adopter organization. Only by institutionalization, they are viewed as legitimate and taken for granted. Some implications of the study for IS and organization research, including specific areas for future research and IT adoption are offered. | en_US |