Reductionism and complex thinking during ERP implementations

In this paper, the authors contrast complex thinking and reductionism in organizational transformation processes, focusing on enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. ERP has been promoted as a management panacea, and has resulted in immense investments by companies around the globe. Not surprisingly, many implementations fail to match expectations. For those dealing with organizational change, the ERP phenomenon may sound uncomfortably familiar: change theorists and practitioners have witnessed the coming and going of management panaceas for quite some time. This study presents an exploratory survey of 28 implementation experiences and discusses reductionism in the realm of ERP implementations. It is argued that by applying complex thinking we may open new avenues to explain these processes.