Nova Scotia University of Windsor

Commonly recognized as one of the most significant innovations in the information systems (IS) area, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems have been widely adopted by organizations in both public and private sectors worldwide. Their widespread adoption marks a paradigm shift in the organizational approach to IS, as the adopting organizations in most cases have moved from a proprietary made-to-order, or homegrown, legacy functional system to an integrated and vendor-developed generic system (Davenport, 2000). Organizations adopting ERP systems undergo a complex process of organizational innovation and change, i.e., organizations adopt not just one but many complementary and interlinked technological and administrative innovations that affect the whole organization (Markus and Tanis, 2000; Waarts et al., 2002; Basoglu et al., 2007). Using the IS innovation typology proposed by Swanson (1994), ERP systems can be placed in the most complex IS innovation category (Type III). Institutionalization of complex organizational innovations in the post-implementation phase is an important process which infuses an innovation with value beyond the technical requirements of the task at hand (Selznick, 1957; Tolbert and Zucker, 1996; Greenwood et al., 2002).