An Intercultual Study Of Enterprise Resource Planning System Implementation In China

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is an enterprise-wide software package that integrates all necessary business functions into one single system with a shared database. By balanced planning and controlling of material, capital and information flow, this software system aims at the optimization of business process and the maximization of operational profits. The successful implementation of ERP, however, is more than a technical matter. It involves systematic and fundamental reengineering of business process, and ideally, its implementation shall upset the hierarchical pyramid of the enterprise's structure, and transform it from function-oriented organization to the process-oriented one. Hence, ERP implementation may come to the adopting organization as a socio-technical revolution, with organizational inertia as its greatest impediment. This can be especially true with its application in traditional Chinese enterprises, as ERP is based at standardized management ideas and is conceived within the context of western market economy, with its embedded norms and requirements somewhat different from those of the Chinese context.However, the significance of cultural factor has long been ignored or insufficiently addressed in Information System literature. Moreover, contextual study of ERP implementation in China has been even more sporadic and unsystematic.This thesis takes ERP implementation as a dual acculturation process and goes to detailed comparisons between ERP system culture and Chinese host culture using Hofstede's cultural dimensions. Three major aspects of misalignment are revealed, namely misfits related to organization structure, communication culture and operational norms. Case studies, both first hand and second hand are made so as to evidence the impacts of Chinese culture on ERP implementation and highlight the dilemma of a so-called universal solution.