The Misalignment between Packaged Enterprise Systems and Chinese Context: A Context Study of Packaged ES Adoption in China

This conceptual paper reviews a large number of literatures in terms of packaged enterprise system adoption and implementation in China. Three types of misalignments between packaged ES and Chinese context are identified, including (1) package-context misalignment in terms of software application, (2) package-context misalignment in terms of organizational management model, and (3) package-context misalignment in terms of organizational IT maturity. Based on (Soh and Sia 2004)’s ERP package-organization misalignment source framework, the researcher identified two group of contextual variables which direct or indirect results in these misalignments in Chinese context: (1)institutionally imposed contextual variables and (2) voluntarily acquired contextual variables. Based on these findings, the conceptual paper argues that, for the discussion of dealing with the package-context misalignment in Chinese business context, it is necessary to consider the context source which causes the misalignment, and then appropriate strategy can be confidently chosen to tackle with system misfit problem.