Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Embedding

This chapter analyses the mutual processes according to which the tool (ERP) and the organisation adapt to each other. It documents the live experience of technological change during the introduction of ERP in a medium-sized enterprise. Focusing on the election of the new tool and its appropriation by firm members, it does not simply reduce the process to a handful of factors (of success or failure), but analyses the different negotiations between actors leading to the reconstruction of both the tool and the organisation. It thus takes an in-depth look at the role of technology rather than just resorting to a simplistic and deterministic search for causal connections. Tracing the construction and meshing of the performance of both organisation and tools within the company, it reviews a set of dichotomies between technology and society, initial project and “impact,” but also action and submission to constraints. Hence, the chapter explores the learning processes and the redefinition of actors, organisation and tools.