Enacting Integrated Information Technology: A Human Agency Perspective

TLDR

Recent perspectives emphasize human agency over technology or structure to explain IT outcomes, yet ERP systems are still viewed as constraining human action. The study examines an ERP system’s implementation in a large government agency through an interpretive case study. The authors attribute changes in system use to improvised learning driven by social influence from leaders, power users, and peers. Users initially resisted the ERP, avoiding it, then later reinvented workarounds, demonstrating that even hard‑constraint systems can be resisted and adapted, supporting temporal views of human agency.

Abstract

Recent perspectives on organizational change have emphasized human agency, more than technology or structure, to explain empirical outcomes resulting from the use of information technologies in organizations. Yet, newer technologies such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems continue to be associated with the agenda of organizational transformation, largely because they are assumed to constrain human action. We report an interpretive case study of an ERP system after its implementation in a large government agency. Despite the transformation agenda accompanying the new system, users initially chose to avoid using it as much as possible (inertia) and later to work around system constraints in unintended ways (reinvention). We explain the change in enactments with the concept of improvised learning, which was motivated by social influence from project leaders, “power users,” and peers. Our results are consistent with arguments regarding the enactment of information technology in organizations and with temporal views of human agency. We conclude that an integrated technology like ERP, which potentially represents a “hard” constraint on human agency, can be resisted and reinvented in use.