Special Issue Part Ⅱ: understanding the contextual influences on enterprise system design, implementation, use and evaluation

摘要

The first part of this two part special issue was published in JSIS volume 13, number 4 of 2004. Given the excellent response that we had to the original call for papers—with over 50 papers submitted, we have the remaining six accepted papers in this current edition of JSIS. As we stated in the editorial to the first part of this special issue, while many companies are implementing Enterprise Systems (ES), they are finding that obtaining the often-touted benefits from an ES is not as straight-forward as vendors sometimes suggest. We argued that understanding why this is the case depends upon exploring the relationship between IT and organization within each unique context. This relationship is best viewed as a relationship of reciprocal causality (e.g. Walsham, 1993; Orlikowski, 2000), since IT cannot in any straightforward sense 'cause' or even 'drive' organizational change (Robey and Boudreau, 1999), with unique features of the context shaping and being shaped by the ES. Thus, the impact and outcome of an ES will depend upon the unique context of implementation, including the unique features of the individuals and groups involved as well as features of the organization and its institutional context (Scott, 2000). It is these contextual influences on ES adoption, implementation, use and evaluation that this second part of the special issue is again addressing.