Incumbent system context and job outcomes of effective enterprise system use

Abstract

Enterprise system (ES) implementations frequently fail to deliver job benefits for employees, many of whom are dissatisfied with these systems that were implemented to support them in their jobs. The literature is clear that the realization of job benefits depends on how these systems are used, motivating us to focus on the determinants and outcomes of effective ES use. Focusing on employees’ use of systems to support their work processes, we examine how employees’ preimplementation context—specifically, the use of an incumbent system and the associated work processes—affects their performance expectancy of a new ES and, consequently, their effective use of the ES and the resulting job outcomes. Our results suggest that (1) employees’ perceptions of two facets of information transparency based on incumbent system use, namely information visibility and information credibility, have different impacts on employees’ performance expectancy of a new ES depending on their perceptions of process standardization in the incumbent system context, and that (2) effective ES use mediates the impact of pre-implementation performance expectancy on postimplementation user satisfaction and, consequently, job effectiveness. Our findings provide insights into the mechanisms linking the context of using an incumbent system to post-implementation effective ES use and job outcomes, thereby integrating perspectives from technology acceptance and use, IS success, and work design.