Implementing Enterprise Resource Planning Packages in Different Corporate and National Cultures

Abstract

ERP (enterprise resource planning) packages provide generic off-the-shelf business and software solutions for customers. However, these packages are implemented in companies with different corporate and national cultures and there is growing evidence that failure to adapt ERP packages to fit these cultures leads to projects which are expensive and overdue. This paper describes research which synthesizes social science theories of culture in order to be able to model and predict the impact of culture on ERP package implementation. It describes a knowledge meta-schema for modelling the surface and deeper manifestations of culture and predictions of ERP implementation problems based on national culture differences. It reports on an empirical study into the implementation of ERP packages in a large pharmaceuticals organization in Scandinavia and the UK. The results provide evidence for an association between corporate culture and ERP implementation problems but no direct evidence for an association between national culture and implementation problems. Furthermore, the results demonstrate that these diverse implementation problems can be caused by a mismatch between a small set of core values which are indicative of a customer's corporate culture. The paper concludes with revisions to the design of our extended method for ERP package implementation to the design of the meta-model and to rules that codify culture constraints that are applied in order to analyse instances of the meta-model.