Five Challenges for Benefits Management in Complex Digitalisation Efforts – and a Research Agenda to Address Current Shortcomings

Over the past decades a number of benefits realisation (BR) frameworks have been developed. The benefits management model (BMM) is considered to be the most widely adopted and is often seen as a reference for good practice in digitalisation efforts in single organisations. However, this literature provides little support for complex, inter‑organisational efforts. This is problematic, considering that digitalisation increasingly involves multiple organisations. To explore this gap, we studied the phenomenon in a Norwegian inter‑organisational eHealth effort. Based on a qualitative study involving 50 interviews, observations and document analyses, we identify five distinct challenges and sugg…

Understanding the Complexity of Benefits Management in an Interorganizational eHealth Effort

Organizational Learning to Leverage Benefits Realization Management; Evidence from a Municipal eHealth Effort

Part 3: Organizational Aspects; International audience; While work with benefits realization requires organizational learning to be effective, emphasis on organizational learning is hard to find in benefits realization studies. To remedy this research gap, we study how organizational learning theory can contribute to improve benefits realization processes. A qualitative approach was used to gain in depth understanding of benefits realization in an ICT healthcare services project. We found that individual learning is present, but organizational learning has not been given explicit attention neither in the project nor in the literature of benefits realization management. We argue that the ind…

Stakeholder Contradictions in Early Stages of eHealth Efforts

Enhancing the Benefits Management Model for Complex eHealth Efforts

This thesis suggests five ways to improve BM in complex eHealth efforts. First, the concept of BR was defined to clarify the existing conflation of the BR and BM concepts. Second, an extended and enhanced BMM was developed that incorporated the BM context, levels of complexity for both organizational and interorganizational initiatives, and the critical aspects of learning and governance. Third, three propositions concerning learning and governance in BM were suggested based on the new model, which can be used to inform future BM studies and guide empirical work. Fourth, the propositions were further translated into a six-question checklist to stimulate learning from the BM process itself. …