The effects of social capital and individual factors on knowledge sharing among ERP system users

Abstract

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system is a management technology that advocates an integrated approach to conducting business. Before organizations apply technology to improve the overall performance, they must understand what their employees need to use it. ERP systems are knowledge intensive, which require a high level of knowledge absorption and knowledge sharing among organizational members in order to be used successfully. Since the knowledge sharing is a key factor to using the ERP system, therefore this study aims to identify the social capital and individual factors affecting knowledge sharing among ERP users in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). A quantitative method was employed using a self-administered questionnaire technique to collect data from 413 ERP users in Jordanian SMEs and SPSS software to analyze the data. This study found that social networks, trust, shared vision, self-efficacy, absorptive capacity; extrinsic motivation and intrinsic factors have influenced significantly on knowledge sharing among ERP users. Such a finding could provide guidelines for the management to enhance knowledge sharing among ERP users for successful ERP system usage.