The Control Devolution ERP and the Side-effects of Globalization

Ole Hanseth, Claudio U. Ciborra, and Kristin Braa

1/01/2005
(Original Publish Date: 2001)

When looking at the implementation of ERP systems in large organizations, the typical business concerns span from attaining the goals of the application, usually globalization and efficiency, securing the organization's acceptance, avoiding rigidity and so on. By now, the literature is full of both normative models on how to implement ERPs successfully and cautioning tales of how the road to success is paved by traps, slowdowns and even disillusion. This paper does not want to take sides in this emerging literature, simply because it submits that there is a need to look at the broader context of ERPs implementation. There is a need to discover new meanings before turning to consulting or critique. Such meanings stem from re-considering the managerial concepts that accompany the ERP implementation, especially the issues of “what is an ERP”; how to do strategic alignment; and what does globalization really entail. The authors frame the study of ERP in organizations within the broader context of an analysis of the consequences of modernity. The new vocabulary sheds a different light on what organizations are doing with ERP: these systems are open, pasted-up, uncontrollable expanding infrastructures; strategic alignment flounders in never-ending tactics and compromises; globalization generates side-effects. Harnessed to enhance control over complex, global organizations, ERPs enshrine the consequences of modernity in a nutshell: they accelerate organizational drift and runaway. The case of the introduction of SAP in a large Norwegian company illustrates a range of drifting processes and side-effects.