Realizing Benefits from Enterprise Resource Planning- Does Strategic Focus Matter？.pdfVIP

PRODUCTION AND OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT POMS Vol. 16, No. 2, March-April 2007, pp. 203–216 issn 1059-1478 07 1602 203$1.25 © 2007 Production and Operations Management Society Realizing Benefits from Enterprise Resource Planning: Does Strategic Focus Matter? Jeff K. Stratman David Eccles School of Business, University of Utah, 1645 E Campus Center Dr., Salt Lake City, UT 84112-9304, USA jeff.stratman@ A key driver of the recent wave of enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementations was the assumption that the integration of business information would provide firms with a competitive advantage, yet concrete business benefits have been uneven across adopting firms. A possible explana- tion is that although the resource-based view holds that competitive advantage is derived from inimitable resources, ERP software has become a commodity. Socio-technical theory suggests that internal organizational resources based on a foundation of ERP technology may be the true drivers of ERP benefits. A firm’s strategic configuration is posited to influence the portfolio of organizational competencies available to leverage the benefits of integrated business information, and a number of hypotheses are developed based on the notion that firms with different strategic objectives will realize different operational benefits from the adoption of ERP systems. Survey data from North American manufacturing firms