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The purpose of this paper is to explore the fit between process standardization and international management strategy of multinational corporations (MNCs) by assessing the compatibility between process standardization and corporate structural characteristics in terms of asset configuration and headquarters-subsidiary relationships.

First, after a literature review on MNCs’ strategy and process standardization, the study suggests two propositions on the fit between corporate international management strategy and process standardization. Second, to empirically examine the propositions, the study investigates the outcome of process standardization in three cases with different strategic and structural contexts. Third, using the propositions and empirical findings, the study proposes a framework for aligning process standardization with MNCs’ structural characteristics.

Process standardization has a higher degree of fit in MNCs pursuing global integration where process standardization parallels the need for coordinating interdependencies in the functional structure, and is consistent with the headquarters’ operational control over the subsidiaries. Process standardization has a lower degree of fit in MNCs seeking local responsiveness as process standardization disturbs the financial control relationship between the headquarters and subsidiaries and is less crucial for coordination as the subsidiaries contain the necessary coordination mechanisms.

The study provides in-depth understanding of how the international management strategy and consequent structural characteristics of MNCs affects process standardization in the course of a global enterprise resource planning implementation. The study proposes conditions of fit for aligning process standardization with asset configuration and headquarters-subsidiary relationships of an MNC.

This paper aims to uncover how implementation practices affect the unfolding of integration as the ideal of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. In this way, the authors aim to provide a better understanding of the ways in which the ideal of integration affects the complexity of ERP systems.

This paper interprets a case study of the implementation of an ERP system in a Dutch company.

The paper highlights how different variations of an object of integration were enacted during an ERP implementation. The authors observe how the interests of the various actors were not always served by the variations of integration in circulation. They illustrate how this resulted in a failure of the network to be folded into a taken-for-granted configuration of constituent parts. Consequentially, having multiple variations of integration contributed to increased complexity of the system.

The paper highlights how multiple variations of a single object of integration are brought into circulation. Such perspective enables a better understanding of some of the complexities associated with ERP implementations.

This paper aims to investigate the accounting logic inscribed in the SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) system and how this accounting logic becomes effective in organizations. The authors draw on the notion of accounting logics by mobilizing the institutional logics literature (Thornton et al., 2012). Accordingly, accounting logics are conceptualized as crucial underlying design principles consisting of a system of beliefs, assumptions and ideas how accounting systems should be designed.

The authors adopt a qualitative case study approach conducted in a manufacturing company, hereafter called Wood Plc. The primary data source is qualitative research interviews. Secondary data, such as internal documents, were collected to increase validity and reliability through data triangulation (Ahrens and Chapman, 2006; Scapens, 2004).

The paper demonstrates how a particular accounting logic – the Germanic accounting logic – gets diffused throughout the organization by the means of the SAP ERP system, and creates challenges for management accounting practices in local entities. The contribution of the paper is to show that ERP systems can foster the diffusion of a specific accounting logic, which is inherently linked to the SAP system, and which enables a specific version of accounting to work in an organization.

This paper could be viewed as an extreme case of a German organization using the SAP ERP system with its Germanic accounting logic inscribed to make a German accounting logic work in the entire organization. Consequently, further research could unpack the relationship between accounting logics, ERP systems, accounting systems and their use by studying not only different empirical settings with respect to the organizational context but also the ERP software used by organizations.

This paper aims to raise the awareness of practitioners of the conceptual underpinnings inscribed in the SAP accounting modules while at the same time pinpointing the potential challenges of implementation generated by the accounting logics.

The paper complements existing studies on accounting and ERP systems by bringing the accounting logic inscribed in the SAP ERP system to the fore. More precisely, this paper shows that in the wake of SAP ERP implementation, the organization studied spread its assumptions and beliefs on accounting, which are manifested in the Germanic accounting logic inscribed in the SAP ERP system, in the organization. This invoked particular challenges in non-Germanic subsidiaries in making accounting work.

The dominant market for enterprise resource planning (ERP) vendors has traditionally been the largest of multinational corporations. Until recently, most vendors (SAP, PeopleSoft, Oracle, etc.) have promoted a “one size fits all” solution built on “industry best practices.” This approach forced organizations to either conform to the “best practices” and configurations suggested by vendors and implementation consultants or embark on extremely costly reconfiguration of their ERP package. The study reviews the concepts of control, coordination, and their trade‐offs plus Bartlett and Ghoshal’s topology of firm strategy. Human resource issues are introduced as examples of organization elements that may or may not conform to the enterprise design structure within coordination and control. Finally, the concepts of control and coordination and the Bartlett and Ghoshal topology are combined to create a firm strategic orientation which is then matched to an ideal ERP configuration or enterprise information architecture.

While the need for information systems is regularly highlighted in the humanitarian logistics literature, a detailed model of what such system would look like is missing. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the need and advantages of enterprise resource planning (ERP) technology in humanitarian emergency logistics. The paper also proposes a model for the configuration, maintenance, operation, and improvement of the system.

This conceptual paper uses existing logistics and information systems literature to build the logical case for an integrated enterprise system for humanitarian emergencies, and to propose conceptual content and process models.

The problem of lack of coordination is reviewed, and a holistic solution is proposed through a structure and model of ERP systems technology to meet the specific requirements of humanitarian emergencies.

As in any conceptual paper, a limitation of this paper is the lack of empirical validation of the proposed system. It also might be difficult to obtain the cooperation of multiple organizations. This research focuses on emergency humanitarian logistics, where effectiveness and speed have priority over simplicity or cost.

The model proposed in this paper links current efforts in humanitarian emergency coordination with existing supply chain information technologies, and is practically feasible both from the technological and organizational perspectives.

Because of the critical, life or death nature of the problem, social and ethical implications of this research are broad, including the divergence of coordination in humanitarian vs commercial and military logistics, as well as inter-agency politics.

This paper is a bold but realistic attempt to take a holistic view of humanitarian logistics and design a system that would be effective, and calls humanitarian organizations worldwide to collaborate in its implementation.

This study is an exploratory study aiming to explore whether different groups of manufacturing firms with similar business characteristics and enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation approaches would experience different business outcomes from ERP implementation. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Cluster analysis with data collected from 256 Korean manufacturing firms was employed to identify groups of manufacturing companies having similar business characteristics and adopting similar ERP implementation approaches. Then, the differences in business outcomes from implementing ERP systems among these groups of companies were examined.

Company size and production approaches are useful variables for grouping manufacturing firms into clusters of companies with similar characteristics. Additionally, large manufacturing firms with make-to-order production approach have significantly higher perceived benefits from implementing ERP systems regarding external coordination and competitive impact than other firms do.

This study was conducted in only one industry of one country and used the data collected by self-reporting instrument. Thus, further studies conducted in other industries and/or other countries and using more objective measures would allow more generalizability of the findings of this study. It would also be interesting to investigate the effects of the logistics practices adopted by small manufacturing firms even though these practices may be more suitable for large manufacturing firms.

This study contributes to the literatures on benefits obtained from implementing ERP systems as none of the previous studies has focused on the relationship among business characteristics, ERP implementation approaches, and business outcomes from ERP implementation.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) technologies can, despite their apparent flexibility, act as a rather obdurate tool for management’s political programmes. To understand this, a combined organisational politics and sociology of technology approach is adopted, viewing technology as a political programme for change. A total of 30 manufacturing case studies grouped around three ERP vendors and systems, show that using technology is not only an issue controlled by an enterprise’s actors. IT suppliers and management consultants and others form communities, which promote certain political programmes. These cases demonstrate that enterprise configurations of ERP do share commonalities, whereas two longitudinal case studies are used to discuss unique enterprise politics. While some features of the systems/political programmes were frozen, others were fluid, and could be configured in micro political processes. Thus hardness is contextual. The political role of technology is not just a case of flexibility or hardness, but a complicated pattern of negotiability, resources, social and geographical distance.

To report a recently completed study on enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation in Korean manufacturing firms.Design/methodology/approach – An online survey was conducted (with e‐mail invitation and telephone call reminder) to collect data from 306 Korean manufacturing firms.Findings – This study presents the issues related to ERP implementation in Korean manufacturing firms, including pre‐implementation activities, implementation experiences, ERP system configuration, benefits, and future direction. Additionally, the results are compared to those results from previous studies on US and Swedish manufacturing firms.Research limitations/implications – The study focused on one industry in one Asian country which perhaps limits the application of its generalized results to other industries or other Asian countries.Practical implications – The results of this study present and discuss both similarities and differences in ERP implementation issues among Korean, US, and Swedish manufacturing firms.Originality/value – This research is the first empirical study on the issues related to ERP implementation in manufacturing firms in the Asia/Pacific region. It is also the first study providing comparison results regarding ERP implementation in manufacturing firms in Asian, North American, and European countries.

The purpose of this paper is to report on an exploratory study to revisit and critically reappraise the impact of IT upon organisational structure, by exploring how the deployment of ERP, when accompanied by a specific strategic orientation, impacted upon the host organisation's structural design.

The study was initially enacted through a postal questionnaire survey of IT managers within a sample of China's largest manufacturing organisations. Follow‐up interviews were then conducted with senior managers, who had first‐hand experience of working on ERP implementations, to help to more fully understand the impact of ERP upon organisational structure.

The study found that the implementation of ERP technology and the strategic orientation of the host organisation are both likely to modify the structural design of Chinese manufacturing organisations. Moreover, it has been found that the success of an ERP deployment is a stronger predictor of organisational form than the scale of the deployment. The results of the study would also suggest that ERP is more likely to affect structural changes, when deployed in the presence of a complementary “prospector” corporate strategy.

The study provides clear new evidence that ERP is likely to have a significant impact upon organisational structure, but, because of the complexity of the technology and the uniqueness of every organisational context, the authors offer no simple prescriptions or panaceas as to how it should be managed. However, managers should be aware that an ERP implementation will almost certainly affect organisational structure, and then take steps to ensure that such changes are carefully and proactively managed.

There is already a rich and established literature with regard to the impact of IT upon organisational structure. However, it could be argued that by focussing upon ERP, by explicitly modelling the effect of strategy and by taking a holistic view of organisational structure, the paper is able to offer a far more subtle view of the complexities of the relationship between IT and organisational structure than prior studies.

The purpose of this paper is to gain insights into the effects of an enterprise resource planning (ERP)‐implementation on job content.

Data are collected using a qualitative expert instrument (WEBA) and a questionnaire (NOVA‐WEBA) among HR‐assistants in a case study in the Dutch hospitality industry.

Contrary to what one might expect, the introduction of an ERP‐system does not automatically result in a more centralized organization: in granting local authorizations user/employee job decision latitude is affected c.q. realized. However, even when a decentralization policy is pursued as is the case in our study, job decision latitude is not necessarily enhanced. This is partly caused by ERP‐related changes such as increasing standardization of operational procedures and data entry requirements, and partly by organization‐specific developments in how tasks get assigned to jobs.

The configuration of ERP‐systems varies by organization, and is largely a matter of organizational choice. The case is unique, as is indeed any case.

Insights into ERP's effects can help organizations achieve better designed jobs. Pre‐implementation simulations of effects can help steering towards desired outcomes.

The paper provides useful insights into the effects of an ERP‐implementation on job content through a case study of HR‐assistants.