Rethinking corporation sameness as success: social systems and ERP implementation

Abstract

Abstract Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems standardise and streamline all functional areas of business in order to improve communication and thereby increase efficiency. They require a large technical architecture that has huge storage needs, networking requirements and specific hardware/software requirements. This paper explores the impact of ERP implementation on a different type of organisation, the Government Owned Corporation (GOC). This research-in-progress paper seeks to begin discussion of ERP implementation issues in GOC by changing the way we perceive such organisations. The authors seek to begin explanation for GOC end users' failure to comply with or fully exploit the potential of the ERP. This paper builds on Hobson et al's (2005) statement that past ERP research has been primarily technologically determinist and that the research has largely ignored what these authors term "the social system". A GOC case study is presented and explored in terms of the ERP and GOC literature. Exploring existing cultural studies approaches, this paper examines why end users in a GOC are neither complying with nor fully exploiting the potential of ERP. The contention is that discourses of operational level staff is significantly different to that of managerial staff and also ERP implementation processes and that effective IT systems require the input of the end users.