The visibility–protection gap in enterprise resource planning governance: shadow systems and information quality degradation

Purpose This article examines the governance conditions under which operational knowledge migrates from a mandated enterprise resource planning system into operationally trusted parallel records, developing the Visibility–Protection Gap as a governance configuration. Design/methodology/approach A three-year action research study across all 80 sites of one private security organisation. Evidence comprises 47 externally facilitated action learning sessions, documentary investigation yielding 1,120 binary governance decisions, separate confirmation of parallel systems, and divergence between client-approved counts and ERP system counts. Seven staggered interventions were measured before and after. Findings Deficient governance dimensions showed a monotonic relationship with confirmed parallel systems: none at 48 sites with zero or one deficiency, five of fourteen with two, and all eighteen with three. Architecture and record divergence tracked the same configuration. Research limitations/implications Evidence derives from one organisational population and requires cross-sector testing. The insider design carries epistemic circularity that safeguards reduce without removing; the intervention lacks a control group and changes are associations. Practical implications A parallel record is better interpreted as a governance indicator than an implementation failure: eliminating it without reducing the deficiency removes access to operational information without restoring it. Learning metrics introduced before reporting protection is credible may deepen the gap. Originality/value Prior work examined power and governance around feral systems and shadow information technology. This study relocates the explanation to the governance architecture surrounding reporting, connecting parallel-system emergence and official-record degradation. Formal systems may retain authority after losing epistemic primacy.