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Exploring Key Success Factors for ERP Systems in Schools

2024, Priyanka Bhati, Saxena, Deepak Kumar

Most sectors use ERP systems to automate business processes, improving the overall efficiency and effectiveness of the organizations. Notwithstanding the benefits, they are highly complex systems requiring careful planning for successful implementation. The education sector has adopted ERP to improve administrative operations and academic performance. This chapter explores the key success factors of ERP in schools. Drawing more insights from the adjacent literature on higher education institutes and small and medium-sized enterprises, important factors aligning with ERP in schools are top management support, training, customization, business process reengineering, change management strategy, module business fit, etc. This chapter ends with a suggested future direction for ERP implementation research in schools.

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Data collection in the global south: practical, methodological, and philosophical considerations

2023, Suzana Brown, Saxena, Deepak Kumar, P. J. Wall

Data collection in resource-constrained environments, particularly in the Global South, is challenging for a variety of philosophical, theoretical, methodological, and ethical reasons. Challenges may involve using research approaches designed in the Global North that are not appropriate when using data from the social and cultural contexts in the Global South. Adopting a reflective approach, this paper examines research projects in Bangladesh, Malawi, Sierra Leone, and Rwanda and highlights the challenges encountered on these projects. Along with the problems, attempted ameliorations are discussed, and insights are offered on how the authors overcame these challenges. The paper posits that these challenges can be mitigated by adopting contextualist methodology resulting in theories that are based on local social and cultural processes. The paper proposes that a critical realist-philosophical approach and methodology are appropriate because of contextual specificity and the innate ability to alleviate problems associated with the Global North methodology and generalisable theory.

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Partners in Design: Insights from an Innovative Education for Sustainable Development Module Design Process

2024, Timothy Savage, P. J. Wall, Saxena, Deepak Kumar

This paper presents a case study of an innovative module design process for education for sustainable development in higher education, specifically in digital innovation to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals that the authors were charged to create. An analysis of the goals of education for sustainable development led the authors to identify intercultural learning groups and authentic situated case studies as key components of an effective module design. This presented the research problem of how to identify both situated, innovative and socio-culturally appropriate development case studies, and groups of learners from culturally diverse locations with whom to partner for the creation of intercultural learning groups. This qualitative reflective case study presents the approach undertaken whereby the authors engaged with higher educational institutions engaged on the ground with sustainability initiatives in key countries (India, Uganda, and Ethiopia) to both identify appropriate case studies for collection and potential student group partners for the proposed roll out of the finished module. The experience is described and challenges and opportunities to this approach presented and discussed.

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Big Data Analytics Adoption Framework and its Verification Using a Case Study

2023, Shivam Tyagi, Veena Bansal, Saxena, Deepak Kumar

Many organizations are in the process of adopting big data analytics (BDA) to make data driven decisions. In this work, we have used a variant of CRISP-DM and broken-down processes into sub-processes, meanwhile also integrating critical success factors in the framework. We have validated our framework to understand BDA adoption via a case study of a big data analytics firm, referred to as ABC in this study. ABC helps large farmers to make farming decisions based on BDA. We conducted in-depth interviews with the Data science team of ABC to validate our framework. In terms of critical success factors, costing, project planning, adoption strategy, identification of business problems, project team formation, data management, training, change management and final preparation were identified as important by ABC for BDA projects. In addition, ABC also considers maintenance, evaluation of business objectives and overall project management critical that were not part of our model. We have incorporated these in our framework. Our research contributes to the growing body of knowledge on BDA adoption, offering valuable insights specific to the agricultural sector and emphasizing the challenges and opportunities posed by the substantial volume and variety of data in this domain.

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A Socio-cultural Perspective on Technology for Environmental Sustainability: The Case of Filtering Water Pots (G-filters) in Rajasthan, India

2024, Rajkumar Satankar, Anand Krishnan Plappally, Saxena, Deepak Kumar, Timothy Savage, P. J. Wall

The design and adoption of socio-culturally appropriate technologies are critical to addressing the environmental sustainability crisis in the Global South. However, implementing technology-based sustainability initiatives has been shown to be problematic, with many such projects failing to achieve their stated objectives or have any meaningful impact at scale. This is because such endeavours are complex, multifaceted, and interdisciplinary and require a comprehensive understanding of the interplay between tradition, technology, politics, climate, and sustainability. Such projects are also likely to be highly socio-culturally contextual and thus require a deep understanding of the specific context and culture within which they will be built and deployed. This paper presents the results of an ongoing research project in Rajasthan, India, where filtering water pots (G-filters) are used to purify waste-laden water. The water pots are made by the traditional Kumhar potter caste and are used extensively for domestic and agricultural use in the local community. Initial results indicate that these pots fulfil both criteria required for impactful technology-based projects in the Global South; i.e., they are technically effective and socio-culturally appropriate for the context in which they are being used. The paper makes various recommendations based on our findings to date and provides details of the next stages of the project.