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Understanding the Impact of Enterprise Systems on
Management Decision Making: An Agenda for Future
Research
Fergal Carton and Frederic Adam
Business Information Systems, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland
fcarton@ucc.ie
fadam@afis.ucc.ie
Abstract: Enterprise systems have been widely sold on the basis that they reduce costs through process
efficiency and enhance decision making by providing accurate and timely enterprise wide information. Although
research shows that operational efficiencies can be achieved, ERP systems are notoriously poor at delivering
management information in a form that would support effective decision-making. Research suggests managers
are not helped in their decision-making abilities simply by increasing the flow of information. This paper calls for a
new approach to researching the impact of ERP implementations on global organizations by examining decision
making processes at 3 levels in the organisation (corporate, core implementation team and local site).
Keywords: ERP, decision-making, organisation, MIS
1. Introduction The Gorry & Scott Morton framework (1971a),
which focused on understanding the evolution
of MIS activities within organizations, criticized
the “total systems approach”, maintaining that
the integrated company-wide database is a
misleading notion and would be exorbitantly
expensive.
An Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
system can be considered as being composed
of a basic transactional system, which dictates
to users how to process business transactions,
and a management control system, which
facilitates the planning and communication of
business targets and goals.
We now know that not only is it possible to
build such systems, but that they are
exorbitantly expensive. This has not prevented
40% of companies in the USA with revenues
greater than $1 billion implementing ERP
systems (Stefanou, 2001). The total market for
ERP software has been estimated at $1 trillion
by the year 2010 (Bingi et al. 1999).
Sammon et al. (2003) describes these 2
components of ERP systems as the solution to
“operational” integration problems and
“informational” requirements of managers.
These are the same concepts expressed by
Zuboff (1988) in describing the use of
technology not only to automate manual tasks,
but also to “informate” management tasks,
such that “events, objects and processes
become visible, knowable and shareable in a
new way”.
Despite this strong push to implement ERP
among today’s business organizations, there is
a lack of understanding of the real post-
implementation benefits of these integrated
systems, and more insidiously, little awareness
among adopters of the longer-term
organizational impacts (positive or negative)
that may ensue.
ERP systems are therefore expected to deliver
the following benefits: (1) reduce costs by
improving efficiencies through computerization;
and (2) enhance decision-making by providing
accurate and timely enterprise-wide
information (Poston and Grabski, 2001).
Much of today’s research in the area of
organisational learning and knowledge
management deals with the difficulties of
creating and harnessing the value inherent in
employees know-how and ways of doing
business. This begs the question as to why so
many companies are willing to throw out what
they have learned in favour of practices they
know nothing about. And, when they do so,
what evidence is there to suggest that
companies do achieve their stated aims of
improved efficiency by adopting these industry
best practices?
Whether these centralized information systems
really are capable of delivering both types of
benefit has been a topic of debate for some
time. “The notion that a company can and
ought to have an expert (or a group of experts)
create for it a single, completely integrated
supersystem – an MIS – to help it govern
every aspect of its activity is absurd”,
according to Dearden (1972).
ISSN: 1566-6379 99 ©Academic Conferences Limited
The correct reference for this paper is:
Carton F and Adam F (2005) “Understanding the Impact of Enterprise Systems on Management
Decision Making: An Agenda for Future Research” The Electronic Journal of Information Systems
Evaluation, Vol. 8, Iss. 2 pp 99-106, available online at www.ejise.com
Electronic Journal of Information Systems Evaluation Volume 8 Issue 2 (2005) 99-106
Gorry (1971) found that managers can use
models to help them understand the
environment they are operating in, and that
this should be considered an “educative”
process, rather than being related to the ability
to improve specific decisions. He does argue,
however, that managers often possess the
knowledge and experience vital to
“parameterising” business models without
necessarily understanding the dynamics of the
model itself.
Of course one of the aspects of employing
what vendors call “best practice” is that all
transactions must fit in the same system
model, regardless of the relative importance of
the transactions. The implementation dictates
that this is an “all or nothing” scenario, where
all purchases and revenue transactions must
be entered into the system, successfully
ignores the 80:20 rule as elaborated by Orlicky
(1975), in what is probably the definitive book
on MRP, according to Browne, Harhen &
Shivnan (1996). If 20% of the components
account for 80% of the cost, why apply the
same rigour to recording transactional
movements of inventory across 100% of
components? Thus, the extreme
standardisation of business process inherent in
ERP systems creates huge volumes of data
without providing a clue for how to exploit it
and may therefore not beneficial from a
decision-making point of view.
In this paper, decision-making theory and
models are reviewed, focusing on how an ERP
implementation might impact on these
constructs. The next section of the literature
review looks at how IS systems have striven to
satisfy both operational and informational
requirements in the past. This is followed by a
summary of the existing research on the
impact of ERP systems, which concludes by
confirming that much research has been
focused in the past on implementation, but that
there has been much less work done on the
post-implementation impact on the
organisation of these systems.
Having established in the literature review that
centralisation of decision making in an
organisation may have an impact on
performance at a local level, the role of
information systems (and particularly ERP) in
compounding this de-responsibilisation of local
employees is explored.
Finally, a number of key questions for research
in enterprise integration are asked, and the
paper concludes with some initial findings from
the field study.
2. Literature review
2.1 Decision making models
Much research in decision making during the
last century was focused on the difficulty of
defining a rational model for an ever-changing
process that also allows for the irrational or
contextual factors that make up the myriad
decisions made by management in
organisations. Most of the literature can be
positioned along a continuum between two
poles, with the cerebral rationality of Simon’s
sequential theories (bounded rationality) at one
end and the anarchical processes of the
garbage can model at the other (Langley et al.
1995).
In Simon’s (1972) theory for decision-making,
he posits that no business could process
satisfactorily all the "zillion things" affecting the
marketing of a product, in the hope that the
right answer for maximising profit would pop
out at the end. That was classical economic
theory, he said, but it was "a ridiculous view of
what goes on". Rather, a business tried to
make a decision that was "good enough". He
called his theory "bounded rationality" and
invented a name to describe it: "satisficing", a
composition of the words satisfy and suffice.
Much of the debate surrounds whether
management decisions can be structured into
distinct phases (eg. intelligence, design and
choice from Simon, 1977), or whether the
complexity of factors influencing an individual
decision will mean that there can be no pre-
determined outcome.
When these questions are considered in the
context of an ERP implementation, we can
anticipate that there may be impacts at all
levels in the decision domain:
The actors concerned may have changed
as roles and responsibilities may be re-
assigned to adapt to the new template
processes. At a minimum, their
contribution may have changed towards
less autonomy and less control.
The decision process may have changed
in that there will be new or modified
sources of information and / or different
steps to the process
The decision itself may change as the
system may have incorporated some of
the conditions and exception traps which
were previously dealt with manually. This
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Fergal Carton and Frederic Adam
may be perceived as less freedom or
additional constraints by the decision
maker.
The question of whether a decision is subject
to programming is a key concept of
organisational learning. Following the
implementation of an ERP system, information
that was tracked manually or not at all will now
have to be recorded unambiguously in the
system in order for automatic triggers to be
activated allowing transactions to move on to
the next stage in the process.
Langley (1995) identifies 3 aspects of decision-
making which render it a difficult subject for
empirical research:
Many decisions do not imply distinct
identifiable choices, and are difficult to pin
down, in time or in place
Decision making processes do not
necessarily proceed as a linear sequence
of steps, rather they are driven by the
emotion, imagination and memories of the
decision makers, punctuated by sudden
crystallisations of thought
It is difficult to isolate decision processes,
as decisions typically become intertwined
with other decisions.
Gorry (1971) explores the relationship that
managers have with information and how
models are one way of reducing complexity to
understandable dimensions. His argument is
that the expansion of information systems into
higher management functions has resulted in
an exaggerated focus on information quality, at
the expense of an emphasis on decision
making models and their components – ie:
constraints, goals and other parameters.
Interestingly, the implementation of an ERP
system will only serve to exacerbate this lack
of managerial models for decision-making.
Firstly, each ERP package uses operational
models as underlying frameworks and these
models can differ in terms of how they operate.
Both Oracle and SAP are based on the
principle of “work orders”, for example, which
correspond to unique production jobs which
consume inventory as they progress. However
the manner in which they tie back to sales
orders is different from one package to the
other. Understanding and being able to
communicate this new process blueprint and
how it differs from the old way of working is a
huge challenge for managers going through an
ERP implementation.
Secondly, managers may not initially
understand the reasoning behind some of the
configuration options embodied in the business
template as implemented by the ERP project
team. Only a select number of project team
members are privy to the logic behind the
configuration decisions that are made during
the implementation stage, and furthermore,
once implemented, users will usually be
dissuaded from any course of action which
implies changes to these decisions. The effect
of this will be to create a “fuzziness” around
the meaning of some pieces of information,
thereby reducing the scope of a managers
decision domain.
Thirdly, there is a wealth of information
important for decision-making, which lies
outside the traditional ERP boundaries
(Stefanou, 2001). For example, information
from external sources, such as published
statistics, market data, and experts’ opinions
are not easily accommodated within the ERP
environment. Legacy systems may contain
years of historic data that can be crucial in
determining trends and patterns.
Managers require decision-making models to
help them decipher the complexity of the real
world. ERP systems, while providing solid
transactional engines at Anthony’s (1965)
operational control level, tend to increase the
volume of information available to managers,
but in so doing, add even greater complexity to
decision making at the management control
level.
Furthermore, because the refrain of ERP
vendors is liberally sprinkled with the notions of
“best practice” and “zero modifications”, the
perception is that the processes embedded in
these systems is not up for question by
individual managers. Equally the tight
timescales for their implementation allows little
margin for questioning the corporate template
being rolled out. Hence managers are
expected to take on models that are not their
own, with parameters they had little influence
on, and deal with the corresponding increase
in information volume.
Little’s (1970) observations would seem to
bear this out:
“People tend to reject what they
don’t understand. The manager
carries responsibility for
outcomes. We should not be
surprised that he prefers simple
analysis that he can grasp, even
though it may have a qualitative
structure, broad assumptions, and
only a little relevant data, to a
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complex model whose
assumptions may be partially
hidden or couched in jargon and
whose parameters may be the
result of obscure statistical
manipulation.”
Winter (1985) warns however, the wider the
range of situations subsumed by the routines
and the better the routinised performance, the
fewer reminders there are that something
outside routinised competence might be useful
or even essential to survival. This can lead to
“irresponsible or slothful” inattention, whose
consequences are “made to seem tolerable”.
Furthermore, if the routines are perfect, being
alert to their limitations is wasteful.
Pfeffer (1992) discusses the selective use of
information in management to rationalise
decision processes, and how, under conditions
of uncertainty, individuals would prefer to use
data and decision-making processes “with
which they are comfortable”.
Earl & Hopwood (1980) refer to the tendency
in the MIS area to perceive uncertainty as
“threatening rather than inevitable”, and, rather
than exploiting information for its “educative”
(Gorry, 1971) potential, information systems
professionals tend to design models that mask
reality with “assumed certainties”.
However, from the broader perspective of the
organisation, rather than the individual,
integrating mechanisms are adopted which
increase its information processing capabilities
(Galbraith, 1974). ERP systems could be
considered mechanisms of integration, in
Galbraith’s parlance, allowing routine and
predictable tasks to be automated. This would
equate with Winter’s (1985) notion of
routinised or high volume mechanistic decision
making, which implies the use of some sort of
system.
In the next section of the literature review, how
information systems have striven to satisfy
both operational and informational
requirements in the past is reviewed.
2.2 Using information systems to
satisfy managerial requirements
Gorry & Scott Morton (1971) excluded a
certain category of straightforward “information
handling” activities from their MIS framework,
arguing that despite the structured nature of
these activities, there were no decisions
involved. Winter (1985) suggests that there is
conscious choice in the selection of which
matters to treat mechanistically, and which
deserve to be treated with some deliberation.
Suppressing the genuine choices about some
matters may be the only way to make genuine
choices available in other matters.
Since the early days of data processing,
designers of information systems have been
striving to satisfy the requirements of both
operational and managerial users. Much
debate has centered around the ability of
integrated information systems to satisfy both
the operational requirements for managing
basic resources and the managerial
requirements for planning and control of these
activities.
Anthony (1965) developed a taxonomy of
managerial activity to help to differentiate the
types of support possible from information
systems. Allowing that the boundaries between
these categories are not clear, he defined
managerial activity as consisting of:
The choices inherent in implementing and
configuring ERP processes do, in effect,
eliminate or suppress the choices to be made
by process users (employees), thereby
reducing the onus on employees to make
decisions for day to day routine work. Taking
procurement as an example, if Purchase Order
approval levels are parameterised within an
ERP such that certain PO’s with amounts that
fall within acceptable limits can be approved
automatically (ie. don’t require manager sign-
off), as long as they are from a recognised list
of items from an agreed set of corporate
suppliers (the only ones available in the
system), then the decision making has been
reduced to a mechanistic level. This will
improve the efficiency of the procurement
process by allowing faster PO approval for
those “standard” items, and should yield
monetary benefits as well, in terms of volume
discounts from suppliers.
strategic planning (setting objectives,
assigning resources, policies)
management control (ensure resources
used effectively and efficiently)
operational control (ensuring specific tasks
are carried out effectively and efficiently)
Gorry & Scott Morton (1971) describe the
characteristics of the information required by
these 3 categories of activity as significantly
different. Operational control activities require
information that is detailed, real-time and
based on the actual use of internal resources.
Managerial control, on the other hand, requires
more summary information, not necessarily
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Fergal Carton and Frederic Adam
real-time and includes external sources of
information.
The framework for management information
systems proposed by Gorry & Scott Morton
(1971) is very applicable to today’s situation,
over 30 years later, where the promise of ERP
systems has been clearly to support all types
of management activity. Although it is tempting
to believe that improved management control
should stem from mastery of the detail
contained in operational systems (and certainly
the language used by ERP vendors would
encourage this perception), Gorry & Scott
Morton (1971) would argue that these are 2
distinct levels of activity, with different
information characteristics and therefore
requirements. The databases to support
management and strategic decisions would be
quite different to those used in operational
control.
It is interesting to note, in passing, the support
for these categories of activity afforded by ERP
systems. Questions of operational control are
addressed by “hardwiring” the execution and
monitoring of specific tasks into standard
processes. Assisting managers with their
management control duties, however, is not
necessarily addressed, and this for the simple
reason that employees are assigned to data
entry “roles” that are pre-ordained by the ERP
software, regardless of the number of people
available to fill those roles. Standard reporting
is not geared towards the monitoring of the
“efficient” or “effective” use of people.
Ackoff (1967) suggests that most managers
have some conception of at least the some of
the types of decisions they must make. Their
conceptions, however are likely to be deficient
in a very critical way: the less a phenomenon
is understood, the more variables are required
to explain it. It was Ackoff’s contention, well
before the age of global ERP systems, that
most managers suffer not from a lack of
relevant information, but rather from an over-
abundance of irrelevant information. Gorry
(1971) decries the tendency to assume that
improved decisions will result from increasing
the information provided. This warning was
echoed by Benjamin and Blunt (1992),
suggesting that “managers and workers are in
danger of dying from a surfeit of
communication”.
The emphasis in information systems design
has therefore shifted towards systems that
provide managers with the information they
require in a broader sense rather than just one
specific decision and also that support their
communication needs. Executive Information
Systems (EIS) and Executive Support Systems
(ESS) have been put forward as the solution to
the problems of information provision to senior
managers. On the basis of a few famous
examples (exceptions at the time), Rockart
and Treacy (1982) have claimed that ESS (a
term they first coined in 1982) was going to
allow a revolution in executives’ use of
computers.
2.3 Existing research on impact of
ERP implementations
ERP software is a semi-finished product with
tables and parameters that user organisations
and their implementation partners configure to
their business needs (Shang & Seddon, 2000).
It is the complete set of configuration options
(often called the template) selected by the
customer implementing the software that
defines how a system will work.
In order to provide a framework for the review
existing research in the area of impact on the
organisation, 3 separate models of ERP
project phasing were considered: Bancroft et al
(1998), Ross model (1998), and Markus et al.
(1999).
These 3 models can be compared in terms of
their nomenclature (see Figure 1).
Focus
A
s-is To-be Construct Test Implement Bancroft et al, 1998
Ross, 1998
Design Implement Stabilise Continuous
improvement
Transform
Charter Project Shakedown Onwards &
upwards
Markus & Tanis, 1999
Figure 1: Comparison of the different project phase definitions
In a study of academic activity related to ERP
systems, Esteves & Pastor (2001) scanned
180 ERP related articles in key IS journals and
conferences during the period 1997-2000 and
found that almost 79% of research work was in
the ERP project lifecycle. 43% of all the
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Electronic Journal of Information Systems Evaluation Volume 8 Issue 2 (2005) 99-106
research focused on the implementation
phase, and this in the form of case work.
Figure 2 shows this breakdown in graphic
format (according to the Markus & Tanis
nomenclature):
Charter Project Onwards &
upwards
10% 43% 9% 21%
Shakedown General
21%
Charter Project Onwards &
upwards
10% 43% 9% 21%
Shakedown General
21%
Figure 2: Breakdown of ERP research into project phases (adapted from Esteves & Pastor, 2001)
Among the 9% of articles researched carried
out on post-implementation issues
(“Shakedown” in Figure 2), benefits, limitations
and factors that affect ERP usage are the main
topics. Some studies analyse the impact of
ERP systems in particular functions (eg.
management accounting). It is suggested that
topics for further research should include ERP
impact on organisations at all levels
(technological, organisational, and business).
Shang & Seddon (200) classify the types of
managerial benefit that can be achieved
(gained from review of IT value literature since
1970). Based on data from 233 published
ERP-vendor success stories, the authors
found that every business achieved benefits in
at least 2 dimensions:
Operational benefits (quoted in 73% of
cases)
Managerial benefits
Strategic benefits
IT infrastructure benefits (quoted in 83% of
cases)
Organisational benefits
The 21% of articles in the “Onwards &
upwards” phase consist of work carried out in
the Evolution and Education phases. Authors
in the Evolution phase have been focusing
mainly on the analysis of new emerging ERP
technologies and business models (web, data
frameworks, workflow, knowledge handling,
application integration,). Education research
includes the analysis of IS curricula with
respect to ERP and the adoption of ERP in
Universities.
The 21% of articles that were non-lifecycle
related (“General” in Figure 2) consisted of the
following subjects :
Research issues (benefits, value, …)
Organisational knowledge (skills, culture,…)
Business modelling (tools, OO-approach,)
ERP development issues (interfaces,
architecture, …)
There is relatively little research on the area of
organizational impact of ERP systems. Few
studies have looked at the post implementation
period of ERP systems to determine how and
why business benefits evolve over time
(Staehr et al, 2004).
The last section of this paper outlines the key
questions for further research in this area.
2.4 Key questions for researchers on
enterprise integration
Management decision making can be said to
be made up of a combination of structured
information “handling”, and the application of
knowledge based on information and
experience that is unstructured. The
application of highly integrated systems such
as ERP to business activities is further
evidence of the “evolutionary nature of the line
separating structured from unstructured
decisions” (Gorry & Scott Morton, 1971).
Research on ERP experience in industry
suggests that the single most important factor
in their successful implementation is the
organisation itself, that is, the readiness of
employees to embrace change. This is
comprehensible, given that the alignment of
resources to the new ERP enshrined business
processes means that roles, responsibilities
and therefore job descriptions will be impacted
at the operational level.
However, it is our contention that there has
been little research on the effects of these
changes at the managerial level, whose job it
is to ensure that “resources are obtained and
used effectively and efficiently in the
accomplishment of the organisations
objectives” (Anthony, 1965).
Researchers should strive to understand the
longer-term effects of the impact of ERP
systems on management decision-making. In
evaluating the impact, the critical criteria will be
the standardisation of processes and the
centralisation of responsibility for decision-
making.
Pounds (1969) stated that managers had
difficulty being explicit about the process by
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Fergal Carton and Frederic Adam
which their problems are selected. Does the
increased standardisation of business
processes inherent in ERP implementations
help managers to identify the problems to
treat, prioritise those problems and assign
scarce resources to them? In theory, time that
might have been spent designing more
efficient procedures can now be spent on more
analytical tasks. Further research is required to
establish to what extent they are equipped to
deal with this more “tactical” work.
Furthermore, as responsibility for decision-
making tends to be more centralised in the
post-ERP world, managers may find
themselves with a perception of having less
control over their decision domains, and with
less autonomy to take new or different
approaches to the resolution of issues.
Fundamental research questions are the
following
What models are used in the post-ERP
organisation to identify and prioritise the
problems which managers focus on?
To what extent does the ERP system
provide the information required by
managers to make decisions?
Has the standardising and centralising
effect of ERP systems helped managers in
their goal of ensuring the effective and
efficient use of resources?
ERP projects in research literature have been
treated like large IS projects, using many of the
analytical tools from traditional information
systems research. Our approach to research in
this area is to acknowledge that the biggest
impact to the company has been on people
and their jobs, and that these effects are better
defined in terms of organizational change.
Using constructs adapted from the study of
organisations rather than the study of
information systems will give researchers the
lens to view ERP implementation impacts in
the context of the bigger picture of
organizational driving forces.
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