Information systems development with anticipation of change focussing on professional bureaucracies

The problems associated with the development of hospital information systems and their implementation in organizations have been the subject of much literary debate. The perspectives taken with regard to this phenomenon are often similar to the debate in IS design in general, in that the overseen social and organizational factors of IS implementation are mainly addressed. However, from our experiences in applied research projects, we claim that the specific organizational structure of hospitals as professional bureaucracies requires specialized development methods. This is the subject of the article. First we establish that hospitals represent a special organizational type. We then draw conclusions regarding the requirements for specialized IS development approaches. Third, we discuss limitations of existing approaches and introduce the Anchor method. Anchor supports the intertwining of anticipation of IS induced organizational change and IS development by the provision of participatory techniques, processes and tasks suitable for professional bureaucracies.