Feral Information Systems Development: Managerial Implications

The concept [of feral information systems] goes like this: line staff discover technology needs at their local work level, and instead of going with IT systems condoned by management, they go feral with unofficial shadow systems from open-source or commercial or self-created IT solutions.

...The authors note that once such feral systems are in place, they tend to be quite persistent (and hard to dismantle). What does this then mean for policy at businesses and organizations? The “managerial implications” in the book’s title would suggest this focus. That said, as the editors note in the introduction, they welcome a broad range of writing from a variety of perspectives.

In this new book, they [the authors] are reifying the concept of feral information systems with various cases from around the world and the bolstering of adapted theories. Their core effort seems to be to try to make the concept of Feral Information Systems (FIS) relevant to a broader range of people—and they clearly advocate additional theorizing (and “meta-theoretical reflection”), stronger research methodologies (than descriptive cases), research, and analysis of this phenomena." [...] "A broad range of writing from a variety of perspectives. They enabled the stretching of the definition of their terminology probably well beyond their original conceptualization.

A "Feral Information System" (FIS) is "an information system [computerised] that is developed by individuals or groups of employees to help them with their works, but is not condoned by management nor is part of the corporation's accepted information technology infrastructure." The 12 chapters presented here present recent research on the phenomena of FISs in an effort to both provide a current picture of the state of knowledge on these systems and to provide a jumping-off point for future researchers. The discussion is conducted from a primarily managerial perspective, although the perspective of employees is also addressed.