Légitimer l’implémentation d’un ERP: une comparaison Canada – Thailande

Abstract

For more than 15 years, large, small and medium enterprises have been investing in enterprise systems. Gradually, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) turned out to become worldwide standards in information technology (IT) in most business sectors. However, a large part of these investments are associated with failing or counter-performance results in organisations. As a consequence, ERPs have a reputation deficit likely to jeopardise users’ acceptance. However, despite their potential reluctance and resistance, organisations continue to implement ERP, and in the Information Systems (IS) literature, there is a lack of research on the way to manage IT project legitimacy with stakeholders. From this perspective, the article identifies and analyses the decisions made by managers to get and maintain the support of stakeholders throughout the project to ensure its achievement. The empirical part presents and compares two cases studies in highly different sociocultural contexts: a North American university and a company based in Thailand. Qualitative data collected from the semi-structured interviews with the project managers allowed us to identify the way the ERP adoption decisions were associated to pragmatic, moral and cognitive legitimation actions. Then, the article introduces the legitimation trajectory concept as a key principle of change management.