The organizational memory mismatch approach in the ERP usage stage

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems not only have a broad functional scope promising to support many different business processes. They also embed many different aspects of the company’s organizational memory. Disparities can exist between those memory contents in the ERP system and related contents in other memory media, such as the individuals’ memories, and the organizational structure and culture. Such discrepancies, called memory mismatches here, may cause various instances of ERP under-performance, thus triggering the need for coping behavior in the organization. Coping may take place in the form of organizational change, organizational learning, and software maintenance. This paper provides a theoretical framework for this organizational memory mismatch approach. The approach is applied to the ERP usage stage. It integrates the organizational, technological, and cognitive aspects of ERP systems, while combining and elaborating on the underpinning ERP and IS literature.