| Summary: | This research investigates the impact of local conditions on the use of information technology in a public organization, and how the use of that technology affects the organization. It focuses on a case study of the state-owned oil corporation of Mexico, Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex). Since its foundation in 1940 as an integrated national oil company, Pemex has been in a continuing process of modernization. In recent years, this process has involved substantial use of information technology and organizational restructuring, based on models imported from industrialized countries. This has been done without always explicitly considering local conditions, although information systems research has widely emphasized the need to consider the social aspects when implementing information technology. Such research has argued the need to explore how the local conditions shape information systems, as they are constructed and enacted by actors when making sense of their use of systems in their daily work environment. The research uses institutional theory and a contextualist framework to examine both how local social values and historical conditions shape the use of information technology and what impact its use has on the social environment and the organization changes that take place. Although the research highlights the local context, it deals more broadly with processes that are occurring in many organizations in various developing countries because of the global transformations linked to the widely pervasive diffusion of information technology. It therefore also provides an understanding of the generic process of information technology utilization in developing countries, with the aim of guiding practice.
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