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As public organizations strive for higher e‐government maturity, information technology (IT) Project Portfolio Management (IT PPM) has become a high priority issue. Assuming control is central in IT PPM, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how a Danish local government conducts control in IT PPM. The authors identify control problems and formulate recommendations to address these.

Adopting principles from Engaged Scholarship, the authors have conducted a case study using a wide variety of data collection methods, including 29 interviews, one workshop, and analyses of documents.

It is found that the local government relies vastly on informal control mechanisms and five control problems are identified: weak accountability processes between the political and administrative level; weak accountability between the director level and the IT executives; IT projects established on the basis of incomplete information about internal resources; lack of operational goals to hold IT projects accountable; and no account of actual IT project costs. The authors propose a model for highlighting how more formal control can be implemented and address the identified control problems.

As a single qualitative case study, the results are limited to one organization and subject.

The paper has implications for IT PPM in Danish local governments and similar organizations in other countries. The paper shows that the lack of formal control mechanisms makes accountability between hierarchical levels difficult, which deprives organizations of the opportunity to pursue and display unambiguous value from their e‐government initiatives.

This paper fulfills an identified need to understand how local governments can improve IT PPM.

The purpose of this paper is first, to develop a methodological framework for conducting a comprehensive literature review on an empirical phenomenon based on a vast amount of papers published. Second, to use this framework to gain an understanding of the current state of the enterprise resource planning (ERP) research field, and third, based on the literature review, to develop a conceptual framework identifying areas of concern with regard to ERP systems.

Abstracts from 885 peer‐reviewed journal publications from 2000 to 2009 have been analysed according to journal, authors and year of publication, and further categorised into research discipline, research topic and methods used, using the structured methodological framework.

The body of academic knowledge about ERP systems has reached a certain maturity and several different research disciplines have contributed to the field from different points of view using different methods, showing that the ERP research field is very much an interdisciplinary field. It demonstrates that the number of ERP publications has decreased, and it indicates that the academic interest in ERP is driven by an interest in an empirical phenomenon rather than that ERP is a new research discipline. Different research topics of interest are identified and used in developing a conceptual framework for “areas of concern” regarding ERP systems. Finally the usefulness of the framework is confirmed by analysing one specific aspect of ERP research; business process reengineering (BPR) to establish which theories different authors and journals have used in their efforts to explore BPR and ERP.

The findings of the literature study, the structured methodological framework for comprehensive literature review and the conceptual framework identifying different areas of concern are believed to be useful for other researchers in their effort to obtain an overview of the evolution of the ERP research field and in positioning their own ERP research.

The paper provides guidance for researchers with insight into what has been published, where to publish ERP‐related research and how to study it, and in positioning their own interest in ERP systems in the interdisciplinary research field. Access to the EndNote database containing bibliographical data of more than 880 papers can be used in future research and literature analysis. For managers, the conceptual framework can be useful in increasing their understanding of the complexity and areas of concern with regard to the ERP system.

The paper presents a structured methodological framework for analysing a vast amount of academic publications with an interest in an empirical phenomenon, demonstration of how academic interdisciplinary interest in ERP has evolved over time and reached a certain amount of maturity and a conceptual framework of areas of concern with regard to ERP systems.

This to show how critical success factors (CSFs) from practitioner-oriented research can be tested and used to generate new theory.

This paper uses an extended example regarding the integration of IT departments following organizational mergers and acquisitions to illustrate in proof of concept that such practitioner-oriented research can generate new substantive theory and be used to begin a cycle of representation-testing leading to enhancing domain knowledge. The method used consists of the identification of an exemplary practitioner-oriented research article, restatement of CSFs into testable propositions, gathering data through interviews with phenomenon participants, analyzing and interpreting data relative to these CSFs, then presenting the results pertaining to these CSFs and observations from examining them holistically.

No CSFs were affirmed in all cases, neither were they rejected in all cases. The pattern of answers reveals a significant difference between factors representing general management best practices and technical practices. The higher frequency among management factors shows a relative universality to these items, whereas the technical issues are noted less frequently as they each apply to smaller subsets of all post mergers and acquisitions integrations but remain critical when they do apply. This set of responses suggests that the frequency of responses does not indicate the importance of any given factor across settings.

This study suggests (1) CSFs, while generally helpful, can also be misleading when applied such that, where of potential importance, they can be brought into a theorizing mode for refinement and extraction of additional knowledge; (2) that CSFs can be sorted into those tending toward general management principles that apply most frequently in contrast to those of critical importance but applicable across fewer situations; and (3) that as a proof of concept the case to theory transformation method can work to introduce heuristic knowledge into a process-initiating theorizing, raising prospects for subsequent continued improvement.

Assuming robust reporting of CSFs in well-conducted cases, this study knows that at least in one setting these factors were important in achieving particular results. However, this study does not know, without subsequent testing and theorizing, whether the factor applies across circumstances and whether it requires particular handling (e.g. timing may be critical but relies on varied conditions to indicate when actions need be taken). By theorizing based upon CSFs for important IS phenomena, the authors create a bridge between knowledge as used in practice and the scientific tools for increasing its value over time.

Although the authors know of case and multiple case studies surfacing best practices in post mergers and acquisitions integrations, they know of no broad studies across numerous organizations; they also know of no studies demonstrating the relationship of management and technical CSFs in an IS phenomenon. Further, although there are other techniques advocated for theory initiation and building, the authors know of none that transforms heuristic or anecdotal knowledge for subsequent theorizing and continual improvement at a more detailed level than mid-range theory.