Usability of complex systems in the organisational context

This paper describes research into contextual factors that appear to influence the successful implementation of a complex system in an organisation. A grounded theory approach was used to collect and analyse data on the introduction, into a large educational institution, of a timetabling system that was already well established in another similar organisations. The results of the study show that the usability of a system which supports complex tasks can be critically determined by the organisational context but this can be overlooked with detrimental consequences.