Pollock Neil, Williams Robin. Software and Organisations: The Biography of the Enterprise-Wide System or How SAP Conquered the World

Routledge, 2009. — 361 p. — ISBN: 978-0415521604
This is the first book that addresses the genesis and career of the modern day enterprise system in a comprehensive and robust manner. It does so through setting out a new approach for the study of packaged solutions and presents novel empirical studies based on in-depth ethnographic and longitudinal research conducted within supplier organisations and other relevant sites. The authors shift the debate within the social study of information systems, from one that is primarily focused on ‘implementation studies’, to one that follows software as it evolves, matures and crosses organisational boundaries. Through tracing and comparing the ‘biography’ of a number of software systems the authors develop a new vocabulary for the dynamics that surround standardised software.