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The purpose of this paper is to identify, assess and explore potential risks that can affect long‐term viability of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems in the post‐implementation and exploitation phase.

The research took a large Chinese private group as a case study. A theoretical ERP risk ontology, which was adopted from the literature, was used to frame the study and generate data collection tools. Two questionnaires were thus designed and used to explore ERP post‐implementation risks in the case company.

The study identified 37 risk events, of which seven were identified as the most critical for ERP exploitation in the case company. The findings show that organisational and human‐related risks are the crucial factors for potential ERP failure and not the usually suspect technical risks.

This study contributes to the knowledge of ERP in general, and provides valuable insights into ERP post‐implementation risks in large companies in particular.

The findings will not just be useful in supporting ERP risk identification and management in the large Chinese companies, but will also be beneficial to other large companies in general, which may be confronted with similar ERP exploitation challenges.

The majority of large companies in China and in the West have implemented ERP systems and engaged in the system post‐implementation phase. Most of the existing literature in the field focuses on the process of implementation. This paper looks forward to the risks involved in the post‐implementation phase. Understanding potential risks that may occur during ERP exploitation is vital for these large firms to achieve and sustain business success through their ERP systems.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems enhance productivity and working quality by offering integration, standardization and simplification of multiple business transactions. The present study seeks to introduce a conceptual framework that investigates the way that human inputs (top management, users, external consultants) are linked to communication effectiveness, conflict resolution and knowledge transfer in the ERP consulting process, as well as the effects of these factors on ERP system effective implementation.

The examination of the proposed conceptual framework was made with the use of a newly developed questionnaire. The questionnaire was distributed to a group of 361 Greek companies that have implemented an ERP system. Information technology (IT) managers were selected as the key respondents of the questionnaire. After the completion of the four month research period (September to December 2008), 108 usable questionnaires were returned (response rate=31 percent approximately). The empirical data were analyzed using the structural equation modelling technique (Lisrel 8.74).

The main findings of the empirical study can be summarized in the following categories: the assistance provided by external consultants during the ERP implementation process is essential; knowledge transfer is an extremely significant factor for ERP system success; knowledge transfer concerning technical aspects of ERP systems is more important than effective handling of communication, as well as conflict resolution among organizational members; the role of top management support seems to be of less importance that the one provided by users.

The present study is limited by the poor definition of its population (due to lack of available data) and the relatively small size of the sample.

The paper points out areas that adopting companies should emphasize in order to successfully implement an ERP system and, therefore, harvest its potential benefits.

The paper proposes an enhanced conceptual framework that examines vital issues concerning ERP system effective implementation, thus, providing valuable outcomes for decision makers and academics. The originality of the paper lies in its three dimensional approach.

Previous research has investigated knowledge transfer and the external consultant's role in it, during enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation. In this study, the authors explore the processes through which knowledge creation happens during ERP implementation and how external consultants help operationalize the same.

The authors engaged the SECI model of the theory of organizational knowledge creation and conducted an interpretive study that interviewed 14 ERP implementation experts in India. The interviews were transcribed and then analyzed using the ATLAS.ti package.

The findings reveal fine insights into how knowledge creation takes place during ERP implementation through the four modes of knowledge conversion – socialization (S), externalization (E), combination (C) and internalization (I). The external consultants aid in operationalizing this knowledge creation process through five types of knowledge-related activities: (I) importing external knowledge, (D) discovering internal knowledge, (E) extricating confined knowledge, (A) activating flows of knowledge and (S) solving problems using knowledge. These activities can be represented by the acronym, I-D-E-A-S.

The study makes two overarching contributions: (1) offering an interpretation and description of ERP implementation as a knowledge creation process and (2) extending the understanding of the external consultants' role during ERP implementation to include new knowledge creation.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are sophisticated information technologies (ITs) that enable companies to gain noticeable advantages over their rivals. However, these systems are neither a panacea to competition, nor a medium guaranteeing success. Neglecting a number of important factors in ERP systems implementation might very easily lead to failure instead of success. User satisfaction issues are among those factors that have a semantic impact on ERP systems' success. In this direction, this paper aims to examine the key factors that constitute ERP users' satisfaction and to explore whether ERP users' satisfaction varies among different users' profiles.

An instrument is constructed based mainly on previous ERP users' satisfaction studies. The instrument is then provided to a sample of 68 users within a Greek energy supply organization and also a personal interview is conducted with the chief information officer. Exploratory factor analysis, multiple regression analysis, and statistical inference tests are employed in order to test the research hypotheses.

The results indicate that three main components affect the level of satisfaction of an ERP user: “interaction with the IT department,” “pre‐implementation processes,” and “ERP product and adaptability.” Furthermore, a different satisfaction level has been traced among users from different departments.

This paper presents substantive evidence regarding ERP user satisfaction constituents and further suggests appropriate practices to better manage various behavioral aspects of ERP systems.

This paper aims to review past papers focused on understanding consumer-related topics in marketing and related interdisciplinary fields to demonstrate the applications of electroencephalogram (EEG) in consumer neuroscience.

In addition to the review of papers using EEG to study consumer cognitive processes, the authors also discuss relevant decisions and considerations in conducting event-related potential (ERP) studies. Further, a framework proposed by Plassmann et al. (2015) was used to discuss the applications of EEG in marketing research from papers reviewed.

This paper successfully used Plassmann et al.’s (2015) framework to discuss five applications of neuroscience to marketing research. A review of growing EEG studies in the field of marketing and other interdisciplinary fields reveals the advantages and potential of using EEG in combination with other methods. This calls for more research using such methods.

A technical overview of ERP-related terminology provides researchers with a background for understanding and reviewing ERP studies. A discussion of method-related considerations and decisions provides marketing researchers with an introduction to the method and refers readers to relevant literature.

The marketing industry has been quick to adopt cutting edge technology, including EEG, to understand and predict consumer behavior for the purpose of improving marketing practices. This paper connects the academic and practitioner spheres by presenting past and potential EEG research that can be translatable to the marketing industry.

The authors review past literature on the use of EEG to study consumer-related topics in marketing and interdisciplinary fields, to demonstrate its advantages over-traditional methods in studying consumer-relevant behaviors. To foster increasing use of EEG in consumer neuroscience research, the authors further provide technical and marketing-specific considerations for both academic and market researchers. This paper is one of the first to review past EEG papers and provide methodological background insights for marketing researchers.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) consultants have the expertise required to understand the specific contextual needs of an ERP client, implement tailored business processes that meet those needs, and ensure that no potential benefit offered by the ERP remains unexplored by the client. However, conflicts between ERP clients and consultants are a significant source of non-benefit realisation, making managing client–consultant agency crucial to ERP post-implementation benefits realisation. This paper aims to elucidate how managing client–consultant agency affects the benefits derived from ERP systems.

This paper uses microfinance institutions in 15 sub-Saharan African countries to explore different paths through which managing client–consultant agency leads to benefit realisation in ERP projects. It uses partial least squares structural equation modelling to analyse data from 127 managers and explains the results using insights from agency theory and the information system (IS) success model.

This paper reveals three routes through which contractual agreements and conflict resolution strategies lead to benefits realisation in ERP projects.

This is the first study that attempts to provide quantitative evidence of how managing the complex relationship between ERP project stakeholders affects ERP project success. It also contributes a novel theoretical model for ERP benefits realisation to complement existing research on ERP agency issues, critical success factors, and benefits realisation.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the key antecedents of organizational users’ continuance intention of cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) by the integration of constructs from the expectation–confirmation model (ECM), technology acceptance model (TAM), theory of planned behavior (TPB), task-technology fit and TAM2.

Sample data for this study were collected from end users of cloud ERP working in companies in Taiwan. A total of 560 questionnaires were distributed in the 56 sample companies, and 395 (70.5 percent) usable questionnaires were analyzed using structural equation modeling in this study.

Findings show that while compatibility and output quality are key antecedents of confirmation of expectations toward cloud ERP, compatibility still reveals overwhelming and more indirect impacts on users’ continuance intention of cloud ERP than output quality because output quality has significant but evidently lesser effects on perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use than compatibility.

First, this study contributes to the identification of compatibility and output quality that may reveal deep insights to the task-related factors in understanding users’ cloud ERP continuance greatly driven by their confirmation of expectations toward cloud ERP. Next, the empirical evidence on capturing the ECM, TAM and TPB for completely explaining the antecedents of users’ continued cloud ERP usage intention is well documented. Hence, this study’s findings have significantly shed light on the possible formulation of a richer post-adoption model.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is now considered to be the price of entry for running a business. However, ERP systems are complex and expensive, and the decision to install an ERP system necessitates a choice of mechanisms for determining whether ERP is needed and, once implemented, whether it is successful. User satisfaction is one evaluation mechanism for determining system success. This study develops a reliable and valid instrument for measuring ERP ultimate‐user satisfaction.

Initial ERP system characteristics and the implementation context were investigated. Some previously validated instruments were selected for examination using rigorous interview techniques. A modified version was developed and pre‐tested. The instrument was then used to administer a test to 264 Taiwanese users that interact directly with an ERP system.

The results suggest a ten‐item instrument to measure three components of ultimate‐user satisfaction in an ERP environment: ERP project team and service, ERP product, and user knowledge and involvement.

This study has conducted a rigorous scale development procedure to establish a reliable and valid instrument for measuring ERP ultimate‐user satisfaction.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the question of what is an appropriate enterprise resource planning (ERP) reference model for specifying areas of change in the context of IT-driven ERP implementation and through the model matching. There are other implicit goals to increasing the awareness of the reference models, as this highlights the principles embedded in ERP systems and explains the classification of reference models, which is useful in terms of the reuse of knowledge.

In this paper, a comparison between ERP reference models is conducted using a suitable decision-making technique and the final results are discussed. The comparison depends on nine criteria related to conceptual ERP reference models: scope, abstraction, granularity, views, purpose, simplicity, availability, ease of use for model matching, and target audience.

This study concludes that the business process reference model is best for specifying areas of change in the context of IT-driven ERP implementations. The final ranking of the alternatives based on all criteria places the system organizational model second, followed by the function and data/object reference models, in that order.

This paper is one of very few studies on the selection of appropriate ERP reference models according to the ERP implementation approach and model matching factors. This research also provides an in-depth analysis of various ERP reference model types.

The purpose of this paper is to gain insight into enterprise resource planning (ERP) research by framing ERP intellectual contributions using a knowledge-centric taxonomy that was originally proposed as an organizing framework for classifying conceptual contributions in marketing. Thus the paper provides a better understanding of existing gaps and future opportunities in ERP research.

Using MacInnis framework, the authors classified a sample of 300 ERP articles published during the period 2000-2014 into a topology of four generic contributions types and eight sub-types.

The findings indicate that whereas the explicating type received the most attention by researches, the debating type received the least. It also seems that there is a temporal dimension to the different types of conceptual contributions. Identification of usefulness of the ERP systems to business was not addressed as would have been predicted by the build-evaluate lens of March and Smith framework.

The main limitation of this research is that only used articles from scholarly journals, and did not include conference proceedings, books, and other outlets. Another limitation is that the search criteria was title-based, which may have missed some relevant papers. Research implications include highlighting the importance of a knowledge-centric view of ERP research, and practical implications include the call for robust measurement criteria for ERP benefits and rigorous ERP comparison schemes.

The main contribution is providing an alternative approach to framing the ERP intellectual contributions. The proposed taxonomy revealed major areas of focus and opportunities for future ERP research emphasis. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first instantiation of MacInnis framework into ERP research.