Why Should I Know? the Reluctance of Absorbing and Sharing ERP Knowledge

In an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system, all necessary business functions, such as financial, manufacturing, human resources, and distribution, are tightly integrated into a single information system with a shared database. Such a system potentially allows firms to manage their integrated business processes and associated knowledge, and to have more control of information and data in the organization. However, ERP systems are very knowledge intensive and require high levels of knowledge absorption and knowledge sharing between organizational members in order to be used successfully.

In the military organization we study, ERP systems are aimed at improving supportive, secondary processes. This means that many military employees prioritize efforts related to the primary process of the military over actions connected to the ERP system. Still, top management mandates employees to use the ERP system and perform these secondary tasks, leading to tensions/user resistance including the reluctance to incorporate or share ERP knowledge. In turn, this lack of knowledge exchange can become dysfunctional since it prevents the use of IT that could benefit the organization.

We applied qualitative methods including 40 semi-structured interviews with ERP users and their managers in three separate business-units, who have been using the ERP for two years. In the study we assess why and how users of the ERP system become averse to the exchange of knowledge and how military organizations are able to overcome tensions between primary processes and ERP implementation/knowledge sharing as a secondary process. By combining theories about user resistance and informal/formal knowledge structures we grasp the underlying reasons of the reluctance. Moreover we contribute to the literature by studying IT as a supportive technology leading to user resistance, instead of focusing on how organizations incorporate core technologies effectively (e.g. Barley, 1986).