The impact of enterprise systems on organizational resilience

Abstract

Enterprise systems are used to facilitate the seamless integration and data exchange between the various departments within an organization. In order to achieve this, rigidly defined control mechanisms must be in place in the system, which safeguard the company's data and protect from unauthorized and unintended uses of the system. This ideal for total control, however, is only achieved to a certain extent. Because of organizational necessities, the configuration of controls in the enterprise system may have unintended organizational implications. The purpose of this paper is to present the findings from a company case study, where an enterprise system is installed. We suggest that the introduction of an enterprise system creates power differentials, which serve to increase control in the organization. This results in increased rigidity, and a possible decrease in organizational flexibility and resilience. On the other hand, enterprise systems can cause drift, from the unexpected consequences of these power differentials, and the role of perceptions of people in solving a problem within the enterprise system. This reduction in control may serve in some circumstances as an enabler to organizational resilience. © 2006 International Federation for Information Processing.