ERP system usage: the role of control and empowerment

• Published date: 01 March 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12021
• Date: 01 March 2014

ERP system usage:

the role of control and empowerment

Jan-Bert Maas, Paul C van Fenema and Joseph Soeters

Organisations have made significant investments in enterprise

resource planning (ERP) systems with the strategic expectation

that employees will utilise this technology to enhance organi-

sational performance. However, research indicates that ERP

systems are underutilised. In order to disentangle the challenge

of underutilisation, this paper addresses the impact of organi-

sational control and empowerment on infusion—the deep and

comprehensive usage of an information system. Moreover, it

also tests whether infusion will lead to higher levels of ERP

system success. Data from a sample of 260 matched pairs of

ERP system users and their supervisors were collected and

analysed. Results indicate that empowerment is positively

related with infusion, whereas an inverted u-relationship has

been found for organisational control. The critical link between

infusion and ERP system success was found as well, meaning

that the more users utilise the system to its fullest extent,

the more likely the organisation is to attain ERP systems’

promised benefits.

Keywords: control, empowerment, enterprise resource

planning systems, infusion, IT adoption and use.

Introduction

Many organisations have implemented an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system

over the pastdecades. ERP systems are commercial software packagesthat integrate the

information flowing through a company—financial, accounting and customer infor-

mation. These systems offer organisations benefits such as improved integration of

business processes, improved decision-making and higher profitability (Dery etal.,

2006). Estimates indicate that around 75 per cent of large organisations have imple-

mented ERP,and firms in the Fortune 500 even show an implementation rate of 80 per

cent. Despite the high implementation rates of ERP systems, ERP failures account for

over 60 per cent. Losses range from$6 million to well over $100 million, and numerous

organisations even going out of business (Morris and Venkatesh, 2010).

Jan-Bert Maas (jggm.maas@nlda.nl) is PhD candidate at the Netherlands Defence Academy and

Tilburg University. His research interests include the assimilation and use of information systems, the

impactof such systems on their users and knowledge management related to information systems. Paul

C. van Fenema (pc.van.fenema@nlda.nl) is professor of Military Logistics at the Netherlands Defence

Academy and Tilburg University. He is interested in stakeholder management, complex innovations,

aggregate level business process coordination and strategic alignment. Joseph Soeters (jmml.soeters

@nlda.nl) is professor of Management and OrganizationStudies at the Netherlands Defence Academy

and Tilburg University. He has published extensively on topics related to multinational military

cooperation, organisationalculture and operational effectiveness.

New Technology, Work and Employment 29:1

ISSN 0268-1072

© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd88 New Technology, Work and Employment

While the stories about the large number of ERP failures continue to exist, Yu and

Mishra (2009) argue that even if a system is implemented successfully, this does not

automatically mean that the organisation will perform better. When the users of the

technology do not use the system to its fullest extent, the benefits of information

systems are unlikely to be obtained and subsequent increases in performance will not

occur (Murphy and Chang, 2012). Underutilisation of ERP systems is a serious chal-

lenge for many organisations (Hsieh and Wang, 2007). Next to the managerial side of

this challenge, there remains a poor understanding of the effect of utilisation of ERP

systems on the work context of the ERP users and the way users incorporate such a

system in their daily work routines (Dery et al., 2006). Hence, this article focuses on

infusion, which is regarded as ‘the highest’ level of system usage, that is using the ERP

system to its fullest extent (Tennant and Mills, 2011). Compared with the implemen-

tation of simpler technologies often studied in prior individual-level research, like

technology acceptance (Davis, 1989), implementation of ERP systems has broader

organisationalimpacts. ERP fundamentally changes the nature of tasks, workflows and,

by extension, jobs themselves (Morris and Venkatesh, 2010). One of these organisa-

tional changes is an increase in control and empowerment, which employees may

perceive when using an ERP system (Elmes et al., 2005).

First, ERP systems are structured to support organisational control in many ways.

For example, ERP systems promote organisational discipline through constraining

users to follow prescribed processes and by limiting access to transactions to specific

organisational roles.According to Elmes et al. (2005), this mirrors bureaucratic features

such as the application of consistent rules to operations and a clear-cut division of

labour with specialised experts in each position. ERP systems can be used to support

organisational control because of their ability to standardise and integrate processes.

They providemore transparency across the organisation. Second, studies recognise the

empowering aspect of ERP (Sehgal and Stewart, 2004). Due to increased visibility of

data and expanded job scope, employees can become more responsive to others within

the organisation. Benders et al. (2009) identified empowerment as one of the organisa-

tional benefits of having an ERP. These authors show that ERP systems can be empow-

ering because they increase both user accountability and autonomy: users receive

ownership of the system.

Although prior research has provided insights in organisational control, empower-

ment and infusion, the concepts have been studied separately (Tennant and Mills,

2011). Moreover, according to Benders et al. (2009), little research has been conducted,

aimed at exploring and understanding impacts at the individual level during the

implementation of the ERP, let alone how these individual impacts are translatedto the

performance of the ERP system. It is our goal to fill this void in the literature by

studying in which way control and empowerment are related to infusion. Subse-

quently, we assess how infusion relates to the performance of the ERP. In contrast to

previous studies looking at control and empowerment in an ERP context, this study

will apply a matched pair methodology instead of a single source methodology to

measure these concepts (Sia and Tang, 2002; Ng and Kim, 2009).

Deep system usage: infusion

Individual-level system usagerefers to how an individual user employs of one or more

features of a system to perform a task (Burton-Jones and Straub, 2006). Although

system usage is one of the most frequently reported measures of system implementa-

tion success, the construct remains theoretically ambiguous (Tennant and Mills, 2011).

However, the work of Burton-Jones and Straub (2006) has provided more clarity, as

they differentiated between lean and rich measures for system usage. Lean measures

mainly refer to the amount of user log-ins or the amount of time ERP users utilise the

system. Rich measures also include in which way users use the system and how they

fulfil their tasks during ERP system usage (Burton-Jones and Straub, 2006). The major-

ity of research regarding system usage has applied lean instead of rich measures. As a

© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd ERP system usage 89