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- Myreteg, Gunilla, 1968-
(författare)
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Förändringens vindar : En studie om aktörsgrupper och konsten att välja och införa ett affärssystem
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Management accounting is performed with the support of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Because of their integrated design and use of joint databases, such systems are often said to present companies with various opportunities for improving operations. In practice, however, difficulties have been encountered in attempting to realize these promised opportunities. Research into the ERP implementation process has explained these problems in terms of a tendency of companies to preserve the status quo instead of realizing change, or as representing the unintended consequences of ERP implementation. However, existing studies are limited in several respects. They define the implementation process as separate, unconnected to the process by which the ERP system was evaluated and chosen in the first place. Furthermore, they limit the process by analyzing it in terms of norms and rules, or power, or as solely cognitive, instead of defining it as complex, comprising all these dimensions at once. A final limitation is that the organization is often defined as a harmonious unit, lacking internal conflict or opposition; if internal conflict is taken into account, it is considered to occur only between different professions in the company, for example, production staff as opposed to accountants. These limitations constrain our knowledge of management accounting change in the setting of ERP systems. The objective of this empirical study is to enhance our knowledge of how a company – consisting of actor groups having different interests and purposes – chooses and implements an ERP system. The study defines this as a structuration process, with a duality between structure and action. Change and stability are co-existent. Social structures are defined as three-dimensional structures in which participation, images of IT systems, and conceptions of IT use as norms are simultaneously present in agency (i.e., speech and behaviour). The actor groups are defined as secondary groups, formal relationships existing between their members. The objective of the study is to create a deeper understanding of how social structures influence the process. A longitudinal case study examined a manufacturer having three distinct business areas. Material was collected mainly through interviews and observation, by also by examining documentation. The use of an abductive approach, aiming to improve theory, resulted in a detailed proposal as to how to operationalize the three modalities of the structuration model. The search for deeper knowledge resulted in the identification of six actor groups and several propositions as to how social structures influence the process. The concepts of uncertainty and practical experience were found to be especially important.
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| 2. |
- Myreteg, Gunilla
(författare)
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Learning to understand what the ERP system is all about: A literature review.
- 2009
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Ingår i: The Proceedings of the 3rd European Conference on Information Management and Evaluation. - Reading, UK : Academic Publishing Limited. - 9781906638443 ; , s. 339-347
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- The purpose of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is to bring several benefits to the company by using a mutual database and real time data. Though, empirical studies show that several companies judge the ERP project as unsuccessful. Research has tried to explain why users are disappointed with the ERP system, but findings are scattered and inconsistent. There is need for further development of our knowledge on how ERP systems are viewed and used in companies. Organizational learning (OL) is a concept that has been used in research within the fields of organization theory and management. Still, only a few empirical studies have been conducted on OL in the context of ERP systems. To what extent and how do research conceptualize the ERP system as involved in the organizational learning process? The paper is a review of research on OL in the context of ERP systems: selection, implementation and use. Twelve articles were found in full text. The purpose is to compare and contrast approaches in order to analyze similarities and dissimilarities. The analysis shows that overall there is a lack of definitions and stringency in research on OL and ERP systems. The complexity of the ERP system and how that can be understood, how the artifact functions or interplays with the organization and the organizing process, is seldom discussed in greater detail. If learning in organizations, at least partially, depends on the use of enabling technologies, it would be a worthwhile effort to analyze more closely how, when and why an ERP system can be used in this respect. A major suggestion for future research is that it should be more explicitly engaged with the relationship between OL and the ERP system. Regarding the ERP system as a part of the organizational memory might be a fruitful way to go.
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