Understanding an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System Implementation with a Transforming Organisational Culture

To offer insights into the interrelationship between organisational culture and ERP system development and implementation. ERP systems have emerged through developments in organisational resource planning to deliver automated business processes whose intention is to support companies seeking performance improvement. However, there is no clear consensus regarding ERP benefits or impact, with contrasting negative and positive assessment about deployment. The ERP related challenges that organisations face could be attributable to differences between organisational culture specific to the adopting firms and those of the ERP provider. The paper builds on literature from these two academic strands, stressing the importance of organisational culture in recognising the complexity in system configuration, implementation, and application. A case study involving a single, not- for-profit (NFP) organisation and interviews with fourteen internal stakeholders. It builds understanding of the influence of organisational culture, particularly in the NFP setting, in shaping employees’ systems expectations and attitudes towards deployment in delivering greater external focus and organisational movement towards a market orientation through integrated systems implementation. The findings suggest that decision responsiveness is enhanced, and cultural values have remained, but attendant compromises centre on increased centralisation and decision-making exacerbate current reporting hierarchies at the expense of devolved responsibility, thus resulting in some change resistance. The study acknowledges gaps in extant knowledge of how transforming culture and systems implementation are linked and seeks to bridge just such gaps in a sector-specific setting.