Challenges encountered during the implementation of the Integrated Information Center at the University of Minnesota

✍ Scribed by Beath, Cynthia ;D'Elia, George ;Branin, Joseph ;Rohde, Nancy

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1997
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 41 KB
• Volume: 48
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0002-8231
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1097-4571(199705)48:5<438::aid-asi7>3.0.co;2-w

✦ Synopsis

engendered a spirit of entrepreneurship and competition among the information services in which anything seemed possible and everything appeared to be up for grabs. Staffs became protective of their traditional areas of responsibility and were reluctant to adopt new, more collaborative approaches to operating. Consequently, we found that the integration of information services in an academic setting proved to be as much a task of social and organizational change as one of technical restructuring. The technological infrastructure of the IIC and the services which it provided are discussed in a subsequent article in this issue by Lund and Herther (1997). The organizational challenges encountered in the implementation of the IIC are the focus of this article.

The organizational challenges to the IIC project were difficult, and at times the problems encountered were intractable. These challenges stemmed from three sources: From events or processes that were beyond the control of the project, from the collaborative goals of the project, and from the way in which the IIC itself was organized. Because of the complex interactions among these challenges, the IIC evolved differently than had been envisioned in the proposal. Each of these three sets of challenges is discussed below. While this organization facilitates presentation, the reader is reminded that the situation was quite dynamic and the interactions among these challenges were extremely complex.