The Measurement Of Individual Level ERP Assimilation And The Impact Mechanism Of Social Network

In the era of digital economy,ERP system has become the infrastructure supporting enterprise operation,management decision and strategy formulation.Due to the large scale and complexity of ERP system,although the best business practices have been constantly summed up by famous ERP suppliers,ERP failures still occur frequently,such as Ingram Micro.Scholars attribute ERP failures to not deeply apply ERP functions and not fully integrate them with actual businesses,namely insufficient ERP assimilation.ERP assimilation has been a focus of research in the last three decades.However,Most of existing studies on ERP assimilation are conducted from the organizational perspective to discover key factors affecting ERP assimilation,but ignore the important role of end users.Actually,the realization of expected ERP return is directly dependent on whether end users can flexibly apply the system to deal with frequent changes of the business.But researchers rarely study ERP assimilation from the individual perspective and all the existing studies from the individual perspective used the multi-case study method,but lack supports from empirical evidence.In terms of the business problems and research gap,this study divided the question “how to improve individual level ERP assimilation” into four specific research questions.Firstly,lacking the measurement scale of individual level ERP assimilation is the important reason for insufficient empirical research.This study designed a rigorous process for measurement scale development.This study,through a multi-case study and interviews with 38 informants from 5 case firms,proposed three formative subdimensions of individual level ERP assimilation,including width,depth and innovation,with clear definitions.On this basis,we followed five steps of scale development procedure,developed a measurement scale for individual level ERP assimilation and validated its reliability.The findings provide the basis and measurement tool for further empirical research.Secondly,the improvement of users' ERP assimilation depends on their continuous learning.But there is no research on ERP users' learning in the existing literature.Therefore,we interviewed 40 employees of the high,middle and low levels from 6 case firms using the multi-case study method(23 interviewees from 2 case firms were the same as previous interviewees),and analyzed the interview transcripts on the Nvivo.The results suggest that ERP assimilation-oriented user learning is divided into four phases: training,adapting,routine,and extending,as well as that the mandatory requirements of learning phases weaken continuously.Learning-via-practice,social learning,learningvia-support,and learning-via-investment are four usual learning ways.In the same learning phase,the learning ways of ERP users are same,but are different in different learning phases.Learning-via-practice and social learning are more effective than learning-via-support.Thirdly,social learning is the important way of users to acquire ERP knowledge.Social learning occurs in advice networks,and the basis of social learning is network ties between ERP users.Thus,based on the social network theory,this study conducted the impact mechanism model of advice networks and network ties on individual level ERP assimilation and its sub-dimensions from network structure and social ties perspectives separately.From the network structure perspective,this study relied on the MBA alumni network,collected 155 valid questionnaires,and used the Ucinet and SPSS to analyze the collected data.The findings suggest that social learning partially mediate the effects of in-degree centrality of the get-knowledge network and individual level ERP assimilation,width,depth,innovation;social learning partially mediate the effects of in-degree centrality of the provide-knowledge network and individual level ERP assimilation,width,innovation,but fully mediate the effects of in-degree centrality of the provide-knowledge network and depth.From the social ties perspective,this study relied on ERP vendor of Yonyou's Heilongjiang branch to collect 329 valid questionnaires,and used the SmartPLS to test the SEM.The findings suggest that social learning partially mediate the effects of upward instrumental ties and individual level ERP assimilation,width,depth,innovation;social learning partially mediate the effects of lateral expressive ties and individual level ERP assimilation,width,depth,but fully mediate the effects of lateral expressive ties and innovation;lateral instrumental ties have no significant relationships with social learning,individual level ERP assimilation and its sub-dimensions.Finally,extant literature highlighted the benefits of network ties,but the contingent perspective studies suggested the benefits do not generalize to all contexts.Thus,this study used the SPSS to further test path comparison of different network ties on the basis of the impact mechanism model of network ties.The findings suggest that on social learning,lateral expressive ties have stronger impacts than upward instrumental ties,upward instrumental ties have stronger impacts than lateral instrumental ties.Lateral expressive ties and upward instrumental ties have stronger impacts than lateral instrumental ties on individual level ERP assimilation and innovation.Upward instrumental ties have stronger impacts than lateral instrumental ties on depth.For width,there are no significant differences between different network ties.