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Although research has suggested that enterprise system (ES) implementations have major impacts on employee job characteristics and outcomes, there has been limited research that has examined the impacts of ES implementations on interpersonal relationships over time. Building on and extending recent studies that have examined changes in employee job characteristics and outcomes during an ES implementation, this research examined the nature, extent, determinants and outcomes of changes in an important interpersonal relationship construct—coworker exchange (CWX)—following an ES implementation. CWX is considered a critical aspect of employees' job and an important determinant of their success in the workplace. Drawing on social exchange theory (SET), the authors theorize that employees will perceive a change in CWX following an ES implementation.

A longitudinal field study over a period of 6 months among 249 employees was conducted. Latent growth modeling was used to analyze the data.

The authors found that employees' work process characteristics, namely perceived process complexity, perceived process rigidity and perceived process radicalness, significantly explained change, i.e. decline in our case, in CWX during the shakedown phase of an ES implementation. The decreasing trajectory of change in CWX led to declining job performance and job satisfaction.

The role of CWX and its importance in the context of ES implementations is a key novel element of this work.

Enterprise systems (ESs) are hard to maintain, since they embed a large fraction of organisational data and tasks, which are often intertwined and highly interdependent. The purpose of this paper is to propose a methodology for enterprise resource planning (ERP) post-implementation change management to support business analysts during perfective maintenance.

The methodology draws a parallel line with engineering change management and considers the steps of mapping the dependencies among ES components, understanding the ripple effects of change, and defining metrics to quantify and assess the impact of change. The methodology is instantiated in the case of ERP systems, for which a tool has also been implemented and evaluated by ERP implementation experts.

Experts positively evaluated the proposed methodology. General design principles to instantiate the methodology in the case of systems other than ERP have been derived.

While existing ESs change management methodologies help to identify the need for change, the proposed methodology help to structure the change process, supporting the task of perfective maintenance in an efficient way.

This study seeks to explore the role of process orientation (PO) in organizations that go through a transition in implementing enterprise systems (ESs).

Based on an empirical survey of 3,000 large Canadian and US firms, this study investigates the role of PO in various aspects of ES implementation. Exploratory factor analysis is conducted using SPSS software to identify indicators and factors of measuring PO and various aspects of ES implementation. Furthermore, the LISREL software was used to perform the path analysis to identify the role of PO.

The results of the analysis strongly suggest that the PO levels at three phases of ES implementation are independent and, hence, require separate measurement. In addition, two research models are employed to examine 14 hypotheses associated with the role of PO in ES implementation. The findings indicate that process‐oriented organizations in our sample are more successful in ES implementation and have faced fewer challenges in the transition process.

This study unveils the role of PO in successful ES implementation. The champions of transition pay special attention to PO throughout the ES implementation. The findings reveal that under certain conditions PO can hinder or support the ES implementation in organizations.

This is the first study that measures PO at three phases of ES implementation. Moreover, two research models are employed to study the research topic, namely: preliminary model, and expanded model. Measurement of PO at three stages of transition provides a unique perspective to evaluate the effect of PO in organizations.

In the past few years, process orientation (PO) as an integral part of enterprise system (ES) implementation has been the center of attention among practitioners and academics. The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the role of PO in ES implementation through an empirical study of Canadian and US firms.

A comparative analysis of ES implementation was performed based on the data collected from a sample of large Canadian and US firms. Exploratory factor analyses were conducted to identify the factors associated with constructs of the research model. Moreover, path analysis approach was employed to conduct comparative analysis across the two samples.

The findings indicate that PO significantly reduces the challenges of ES implementation. Moreover, PO has been shown to have a positive effect on the successful implementation and utilization of ES under certain conditions. However, the level of PO at different phases is observed to have diverse effects on different aspects of ES implementation as a result of opposite forces of change. In addition, the path analysis confirms the validity of measurement of PO at three phases of ES implementation.

No database of managers who have been involved in all three phases of ES implementation exists; hence, the respondents are asked to answer the questionnaire only if they are involved in all three phases of ES implementation. This places a limitation on the respond rate.

This paper is the first paper that measures PO at three phases of ES implementation and explores the effect of PO on different dimensions of ES implementation. This approach provides a novel insight into understanding of the role of PO in ES implementation. This paper offers two major contributions toward a further understanding of the business processes in organizations. The first contribution of this paper is the development of measurement systems for assessing the level of PO and various dimensions of ES implementation. The second major contribution of this paper is unveiling the role of PO in ES implementation through the comparative analysis across Canadian and US firms.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the nature of the difficulties experienced during enterprise system (ES) adoption. More specifically, this paper aims to investigate interrelations between these difficulties and therefore identify the source difficulties that cause other problems.

The research methodology is based on grounded theory approach and draws from the experience of a few dozen ES adopters. Interviews with ES practitioners are conducted and open coding procedure is applied during the process of data gathering. Next, axial coding is used to verify problem categories and subcategories. Finally, causal mapping analysis is performed in order to reveal interrelations among difficulties and elicit source problems.

The results suggest causal relationship among various problem categories and reveal seven source difficulties in ES implementation: knowledge of employees holding various positions in the adopter organisations' hierarchy, changes in the enterprise occurring during ES adoption, finance, enterprise structure, information technology (IT) infrastructure, data import and legacy systems, and training schedule.

The need for further research in order to incorporate multiple stakeholder view, project phase, and success measure.

The results may help practitioners in reaching the problems' source and thus facilitate overcoming the actual problems rather than ineffectively struggling with their symptoms. As a result, practitioners may better anticipate possible problems and assess potential threats to their projects.

This study gives insight into the actual problems experienced by ES adopters. It also identifies the real problems encountered during ES implementation as well as the other problems that occur as a result of these source difficulties.

Organisations spend a lot of money, time and resources on enterprise system (ES) implementation and often they do not realise the expected benefits from these complex systems. There is a gap in the literature in providing sufficient insight into the implementation process or how an ES might influence or contribute to a culture change. The purpose of this paper is to address the gap in the ES literature around culture by exploring the implementation that was undertaken within a large UK university.

This paper contributes to the higher education (HE) and ES literature through an in-depth study of an ES, Strategic Information Technology Services (SITS) implementation within a university in the UK. The study was undertaken over a three-year period where one of the authors was embedded within the organisation.

Using a cultural analysis framework, the extensive rich data were analysed and the outcomes indicate that SITS has had a huge influence on the culture of the university; the technology’s rigid structure has imposed many changes that had not been anticipated.

ES have recently emerged in the HE sector where they are intended to support the management of student data and provide strategic management information. Although there are many studies which have explored important aspects of the implementation of ES, one area that appears to have been under-researched is how these systems are implicated in culture change within organisations. The results of this study will enable managers as well as IT specialists to gain rich insights into an ES implementation in the HE sector and to use this knowledge for future implementations.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role and impact of business process management (BPM) in successful enterprises system (ES) software package implementation.

A literature review was conducted to understand the critical success factors in successful ES implementation. The review covered numerous published books and articles, and looking at the experiences of several organizations.

ES is far from being an IT project, and is more of an integrated organizational development approach that changes the way organizations do business, and the way work is done. Consequently, to implement ES successfully, organizations must treat it like a change management project and focus on an integrated approach of BPM.

This paper addresses the role and impact of BPM in successful ES implementation to improve the experience of many organizations that are undertaking or plan to undertake this effort to improve performance, undertake better decision making, and achieve a competitive advantage.

The purpose of this paper is to present and test a model that seeks to answer Robey et al.'s challenge that “ERP's critical success factors offer few insights beyond conventional wisdom.” The model proposes that many so‐called critical success factors (CSFs) affect organizational benefits from enterprise systems use (OBESU) through their impact on three outcomes of an enterprise systems (ES) implementation process, namely functional fit, overcoming organizational inertia, and delivering a working system.

The model is tested using content analysis of 133 customer presentations at SAP's April 2007 Sapphire USA Conference.

The benefit‐driver approach appears to provide at least one good answer to Robey et al.'s challenge.

It seems likely that the model is valid for most large Western organizations implementing ES.

The model provides new insights into how and why the CSFs affect benefits from ES.

No prior study to the best of one's knowledge has sought to explain in such depth how ES project CSFs affect OBESU.

The purpose of this paper is to show empirically how knowledge management, particularly knowledge integration (KI), acts as a mediator between different leadership styles and Enterprise Systems (ES) success. It proposes a model of KI as a mediator between two leadership styles (the transformational and transactional leadership styles). The study also aims to expose the most relevant leadership styles to be practiced by leaders when managing the ES post-implementation stage.

Valid data were collected from 263 survey respondents in Malaysian companies. The authors employed structural equation modelling and used the path modelling approach to investigate the underlying relationships between the variables. The authors then tested the mediating effects of KI by using the bootstrapping procedures proposed by Preacher and Hayes, which suits the path analysis method.

The results provide empirical evidence on the relationships between the variables and on the role of KI mechanisms as a mediator between leadership styles and ES success, especially in the ES post-implementation phase. Both leadership styles have to be practiced by leaders while managing an ES.

Future research can investigate the role of KI mechanisms as moderators between both leadership styles. The study can also be expanded by looking in-depth at other leadership styles.

This paper is useful for management researchers and as a guide to management practice for business managers.

This paper proposes a model that examines the vitality of KI effect in ES post-implementation stage by different leadership styles. The results expose the importance of leaders’ adoption of KI mechanisms and call for manager attention to the importance of using the right leadership styles when managing ES.

Enterprise Systems are comprehensive and complex applications that form the core business operating system for many companies worldwide and throughout most industries. The selection, implementation, use and continuous change of Enterprise Systems (ES) (e.g. mySAP.com) require a great amount of knowledge and experience. Due to the lack of in‐house ES knowledge and the high costs of engaging experienced implementation consultants, organizations realize the need to better leverage their knowledge resources. Managing this knowledge is increasingly important with the second wave of ES projects focusing E‐Business applications like Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Supply Chain Management (SCM). These new applications embrace an open‐integration strategy that will incorporate and support other vendors’ applications as part of its Internet‐based enterprise computing platform. This paper proposes a framework for managing knowledge in Enterprise Systems. The framework draws its strength from meta‐case studies and comprehensive literature analyses, which is consolidated into a three‐dimensional framework. The preliminary results show that the importance of value‐adding activities and innovation are elemental to knowledge management in the aspect of ES.