Reductionism and complex thinking during ERP implementations

In this paper, the authors contrast complex thinking and reductionism in organizational transformation processes, focusing on enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. ERP has been promoted as a management panacea, and has resulted in immense investments by companies around the globe. Not surprisingly, many implementations fail to match expectations. For those dealing with organizational change, the ERP phenomenon may sound uncomfortably familiar: change theorists and practitioners have witnessed the coming and going of management panaceas for quite some time. This study presents an exploratory survey of 28 implementation experiences and discusses reductionism in the realm of ERP implementations. It is argued that by applying complex thinking we may open new avenues to explain these processes.

[1]  G. Hodgson.  The Rationalist Conception of Action , 1985 .

[2]  T. Davenport.  Putting the enterprise into the enterprise system. , 1998, Harvard business review.

[3]  J. Gill,et al.  MANAGEMENT BY PANACEA: ACCOUNTING FOR TRANSIENCE , 1993 .

[4]  Edgar Morin,et al.  La méthode. 1 : La Nature de la Nature , 1977 .

[5]  John W. Meyer,et al.  Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony , 1977, American Journal of Sociology.

[6]  Andrew D. Brown.  Narrative, Politics and Legitimacy in an IT Implimentation , 1998 .

[7]  Γεώργιος Β. Καλαούζης.  Δυναμικό μοντέλο ανάλυσης στρατηγικής διαχείρισης έργου : η περίπτωση υλοποίησης συστημάτων enterprise resource planning (E.R.P.) , 2003 .

[8]  Eric Abrahamson.  Managerial Fads and Fashions: The Diffusion and Rejection of Innovations , 1991 .

[9]  Maurice Landry.  A Note on the Concept of 'Problem' , 1995 .

[10]  Charalambos Spathis,et al.  The usefulness of ERP systems for effective management , 2003, Ind. Manag. Data Syst..

[11]  C. Beed,et al.  Polarities between Naturalism and Non-Naturalism in Contemporary Economics: An Overview , 1996 .

[12]  Eric Abrahamson,et al.  MANAGEMENT FASHION: LIFECYCLES, TRIGGERS, AND COLLECTIVE LEARNING PROCESSES. , 1997 .

[13]  N. Kay.  Three Different Ways to Tie Your Shoelaces: Comment on Hodgson , 1988 .

[14]  Thomaz Wood,et al.  `For the English to See': The Importation of Managerial Technology in Late 20th-Century Brazil , 1997 .