On the use of rhetoric in promoting enterprise resource planning systems
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to improve the understanding of the rhetoric used to promote enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, which are complex organisation-wide software packages inherently connected to the domains of management and organisation.
Design/methodology/approach
The study adopts a post-essentialist view on ERP systems and takes the form of a rhetorical analysis. Engaging in rhetorical scholarship in the area of technological change and management fashion literatures, this paper offers a close reading of a management text on ERP systems by Thomas H. Davenport published in 1998 in the Harvard Business Review.
Findings
The rhetorical analysis distinguishes and identifies three rhetorical strategies – namely, rationalisation, theorisation and contradiction – used to promote ERP systems and thus involved in the construction of the phenomenon revolving around ERP systems.
Originality/value
In spite of the importance of the rhetorical analysis of information technology in the context in which they operate, this paper argues that constructions of ERP systems should also be analysed beyond organisation-specific considerations. It further suggests that both researchers and practitioners should take seriously the rhetoric invoked by the well-known management writer that may easily go unnoticed.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The author gratefully acknowledges the helpful comments and suggestions from the Guest Editor Catherine Cassell, the two anonymous reviewers, Lili Kihn, Salme Näsi, Matias Laine, Henri Teittinen and the participants of the departmental research seminar on business studies at the University of Tampere, November 2013; the 37th Annual Congress of the European Accounting Association in Tallinn, May 2014 and the Doctoral Tutorial of Accounting in Porvoo, August 2014. Financial support was provided by the Finnish Cultural Foundation, the Alfred Kordelin Foundation and the Foundation for Economic Education.
Citation
Lepistö, L. (2015), "On the use of rhetoric in promoting enterprise resource planning systems", Baltic Journal of Management, Vol. 10 No. 2, pp. 203-221. https://doi.org/10.1108/BJM-01-2014-0006
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2015, Emerald Group Publishing Limited