| Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems represent a critical organizational resource that is becoming more strategic to organizations. As a strategic asset, it is imperative that ERP be implemented successfully and meets the needs of the organization. Further, it is essential that ERP be well understood by internal personnel for realizing its full potential. Due to lack of experience and expertise in-house, organizations often rely on consultants for the acquisition of consulting firms' long-established experience and knowledge bases.; Recognizing that there is relatively little knowledge transfer empirical research in the information systems domain, this study examines the conditions under which business and technical knowledge is transferred from consultants to clients in the context of ERP implementation. Business and technical knowledge includes best practices, technical know-how, integration with other applications, and debugging. Success of ERP implementation depends on the ability for consultants to transfer business and technical knowledge and for clients to interpret and understand different implications for such knowledge. Therefore, a research question examined in this study is as follows—What are the major determinants of knowledge transfer in the context of ERP implementation?; Initial interviews and preliminary survey questionnaires were conducted to refine research model and gain additional insight regarding ERP implementation. Matched-pair survey questionnaires were employed for the data collection process. PLS was used to test the theoretical framework.; Results provide support for six of the ten hypotheses. In the context of ERP implementation, characteristics of the individuals influenced knowledge transfer. They include the recipient's intrinsic motivation, perceptions about the source's credibility, and the ability for the recipient to display communication decoding competence. The characteristics of the knowledge transferred also mattered, and included the extent to which the effects of knowledge could be observed. Lastly, the characteristics of the relationship among individuals also provided support for the importance of developing a good relationship between a source and a recipient for transferring knowledge. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)... |
