Taking information technology seriously: on the legitimating discourses of enterprise resource planning system adoption

Abstract

Although researchers of management control and accounting have extensively addressed the implications of enterprise resource planning (ERP) system adoption over the past decade, there is a paucity of research that explicitly pays attention to the legitimation of ERP system adoption. To extend the analysis beyond a single adopter, the paper investigates how an ERP software vendor constructs legitimation for ERP system adoption. The study is conducted by drawing upon critical discourse analysis that is a part of the qualitative research tradition. It is used in the empirical analysis that focuses on articles on ERP system adoptions published in the customer relationship magazine of a notable accounting software company covering the years 2002–2012. As a result of the analysis, the study identifies five legitimating discourses that construct the adoption of an ERP system as an appropriate action. The legitimating discourses are named as rationality, mundanity, modernity, evolution and authority. The paper illustrates that the legitimating discourses are multifaceted constructions that are intertwined with each other and overlapping. The study contributes to previous management accounting research by focusing on a discursive legitimation of ERP system adoption constructed by the software vendor and the inclusion of accounting-related arguments in this process. The paper also contributes to research that considers the legitimation of important organisational actions and their discursive construction.