Unfolding New Times: The Implementation of Enterprise Resource Planning into an Academic Administration

This paper analyzes one of the first ERP implementation projects within a prestigious US university, an initiative that opened organizational ‘doors’ to multiple narratives of the unknown whose presence challenged system localization efforts. We use an interpretive, case-study-based narrative methodology adopting a time sensitive, actor -network perspective, to highlight the University’s choice to implement a standard ERP package and the negotiations that allowed the technology to be compromised. Much of the research in this area has tended toward snapshot actor-network analyses that foreground the agency and role of technology in negatively subverting ERP projects. This study provides a more balanced conceptualization of computermediated change efforts, where the ‘locally accepted’ ERP system results from a highly progressive and non-linear process of translation involving negotiations with many alien influences. Small, punctuated moments are interwoven to affect change and result in the future becoming colonized through the unfolding of day-to-day events.