A - Comprehensive Literature Review On ERP

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A comprehensive literature review of the ERP research eld over a decade

Bjarne Rerup Schlichter
Aarhus School of Business, University of Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark, and
486
Received July 2009 Revised November 2009 Revised January 2010 Accepted February 2010
Pernille Kraemmergaard
Centre for IS Management, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark
Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is rst, to develop a methodological framework for conducting a comprehensive literature review on an empirical phenomenon based on a vast amount of papers published. Second, to use this framework to gain an understanding of the current state of the enterprise resource planning (ERP) research eld, and third, based on the literature review, to develop a conceptual framework identifying areas of concern with regard to ERP systems. Design/methodology/approach Abstracts from 885 peer-reviewed journal publications from 2000 to 2009 have been analysed according to journal, authors and year of publication, and further categorised into research discipline, research topic and methods used, using the structured methodological framework. Findings The body of academic knowledge about ERP systems has reached a certain maturity and several different research disciplines have contributed to the eld from different points of view using different methods, showing that the ERP research eld is very much an interdisciplinary eld. It demonstrates that the number of ERP publications has decreased, and it indicates that the academic interest in ERP is driven by an interest in an empirical phenomenon rather than that ERP is a new research discipline. Different research topics of interest are identied and used in developing a conceptual framework for areas of concern regarding ERP systems. Finally the usefulness of the framework is conrmed by analysing one specic aspect of ERP research; business process reengineering (BPR) to establish which theories different authors and journals have used in their efforts to explore BPR and ERP. Research limitations/implications The ndings of the literature study, the structured methodological framework for comprehensive literature review and the conceptual framework identifying different areas of concern are believed to be useful for other researchers in their effort to obtain an overview of the evolution of the ERP research eld and in positioning their own ERP research. Practical implications The paper provides guidance for researchers with insight into what has been published, where to publish ERP-related research and how to study it, and in positioning their own interest in ERP systems in the interdisciplinary research eld. Access to the EndNote database containing bibliographical data of more than 880 papers can be used in future research and literature analysis. For managers, the conceptual framework can be useful in increasing their understanding of the complexity and areas of concern with regard to the ERP system. Originality/value The paper presents a structured methodological framework for analysing a vast amount of academic publications with an interest in an empirical phenomenon, demonstration of how academic interdisciplinary interest in ERP has evolved over time and reached a certain amount of maturity and a conceptual framework of areas of concern with regard to ERP systems. Keywords Manufacturing resource planning, Literature, Research Paper type Literature review
Journal of Enterprise Information Management Vol. 23 No. 4, 2010 pp. 486-520 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 1741-0398 DOI 10.1108/17410391011061780
1. Introduction An enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is a business management system that comprises integrated sets of comprehensive software, which can be used to manage and integrate all the business functions within an organisation with a rationalised data architecture characterised by core process integration and shared product and/or customer databases (Ross et al., 2006). Among the most important attributes of ERP are its abilities to automate and integrate business processes, enable the implementation of best business practices, share common data and practices across the entire enterprise and produce and access information in real time (Soh et al., 2000; Nah and Lau, 2001), and often the implementation of ERP has been linked to business process re-engineering (BPR) (Koch, 2001a; Subramoniam et al., 2009). During the 1990s ERP systems became the de-facto standard for the replacement of legacy systems in large companies, particularly multinationals (Shanks, 2000). During the past decade ERP has attracted attention from both academic and industrial communities (Shehab et al., 2004) and we feel that now is an opportune time to ask how the ERP eld has evolved and what its present state is (Chen and Hirschheim, 2004). However, several scholars have already argued that research on ERP has reached some maturity (Botta-Genoulaz et al., 2005; Mller, 2005) and others have argued that the studies in ERP systems constitute a separate research domain (Mller, 2005). None of these researchers seem to have statistical documentation for their statements, and we would like to investigate whether they are right. This will be accomplished through a comprehensive literature study of more than 885 peer-reviewed journal publications published from 2000 to 2009. We have chosen to analyse papers published in various disciplines and journals, and have not limited ourselves to papers published only on, e.g. information systems, accounting and operation management. The aim is to assist scholars with an insight not just into their own scientic eld but also into complementary elds for views on the research related to ERP systems (Botta-Genoulaz et al., 2005). An extensive number of papers have included literature studies focusing on specic aspects of ERP, e.g. business process re-engineering (BPR) (Subramoniam et al., 2009), critical success factors for the implementation of ERP (Al-Mashari, 2001; Nah and Lau, 2001; Al-Mashari et al., 2003), systems justication (McGaughey and Angappa, 2007), risk management (Aloini et al., 2007) and management accounting (Rom and Rohde, 2006), where papers are analysed according to established frameworks. However, only a limited number of literature reviews have been carried out on the ERP research eld (Esteves and Pastor, 2001; Mller et al., 2004; Shehab et al., 2004; Botta-Genoulaz et al., 2005). These reviews have either focused on papers published in certain disciplines (Esteves and Pastor, 2001; Cumbie et al., 2005; Esteves and Bohorquez, 2007), only included papers within limited and/or out-dated time frames (Botta-Genoulaz et al., 2005) or not made their method for collecting papers to be included in the review explicit to the reader (Shehab et al., 2004). Even though these reviews bring about some insight into the ERP eld, none of the reviews focused on the entire ERP eld until 2009. The purpose of this paper is threefold. The rst objective is to develop a methodological framework for conducting a comprehensive literature study on an empirical phenomenon based on a vast amount of papers published over a long time span across disciplines. The second objective is to use this framework to gain an understanding of the current state of the ERP eld across established disciplines
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(Hirschheim and Klein, 2003). The third objective is, based on the literature review, to develop a conceptual framework identifying areas of concern in regard to ERP systems. The paper is organised as follows. In section 2 we present existing literature studies on ERP systems to position our own literature study, clarifying which questions we would like to address. In section 3 the methodology framework for carrying out the literature study is presented. In the section 4 the ndings of the review are presented; the ndings are discussed and the conceptual framework presented in section 5; and nally suggestions for further analysis of the papers included in the review are outlined and the implications for research and praxis presented in the concluding section 6 of the paper. 2. Previous literature studies on ERP In this section the existing literature review studies until 2009 will be presented. The purpose of this section is to position our literature review with regard to existing knowledge about the ERP eld, and to formulate specic research questions to be asked and issues to be discussed on the basis of our ndings. After an individual presentation of the ve ERP literature review publications that we have been able to nd, we will discuss the methods used and the shortcomings of the publications with regard to the ability of the papers to give an overview of the ERP eld (see Table I). The rst review we have been able to nd was published in August 2001 (Esteves and Pastor, 2001). This paper presents an annotated bibliography of ERP publications published in ten main IS journals and eight IS conferences during the period 1997-2000. A total of 189 publications are included in the study, of which only a minor portion is journal publications 21 in total: two were published in 1998, three in 1999 and 16 in 2000. The publications identied in this paper originate from a small number of sources and were at that time quite recent. The publications analysed show that ERP researchers mainly concentrated on issues related to the implementation phase of the ERP life cycle. Until then the other phases had been almost forgotten. The authors conclude their paper by stating that ERP systems offer many potential areas for research and, due to their pervasive nature, ERP systems are of interest to a wide range of scholarly disciplines (from software engineering to accounting), in addition to the IS eld. They also suggest that ERP research could or should be interdisciplinary and that the number of publications would grow exponentially in 2001 and 2002. In their review of 76 ERP publications, Shehab et al. (2004) classify the literature according to selection and implementation, and major extracts of each paper are
Year 1 2 3 4 5 2001 2004 2005 2005 2007 2010
Author Esteves and Pastor (2001) Shehab et al. (2004) Botta-Genoulaz et al. (2005) Cumbie et al. (2005) Esteves and Bohorquez (2007) The present review
Papers 189 76 80 49 640 885
Span 1997-2000 1990-2003 2003-2004 1999-2004 1001-2005 2000-2009
Frame Annotated bibliography Selection/implementation Identies six areas of research Implementation/operation/benet Life cycle Topic/discipline/method
Table I. Earlier literature reviews
addressed and analysed. The aim of the paper is to identify fruitful opportunities for further research within ERP, and the authors state that they hope that their paper can reinforce the ongoing research on ERP and provide a broad view of the current status in ERP research. Included in the review are 76 publications ve books, eight conference papers and 63 journal publications published from 1990 to 2003. Taking a closer look at the references, we nd that only nine of these papers were published before 2000; the remaining papers were published in the period from 2000 to 2003. The authors conclude their paper by identifying shortcomings in the literature on issues of interest to the authors. Shehab et al. (2004) do not present the method for selection of the publications included in the review, which leads us to question whether the paper actually does provide an overview of the literature in general, or just an overview of publications and disciplines randomly selected by the authors themselves. Additionally, we question the validity of the identied shortcomings, since no information is provided as to why these particular shortcomings are mentioned and not others. Botta-Genoulaz et al. (2005) published a survey on research literature on ERP systems from 2003 and 2004 in which they analyse 80 academic contributions from various disciplines in order to identify the trends of the research literature. Botta-Genoulaz et al. (2005) use web search facilities to identify publications to be included. In their paper the method used for selecting the publications is presented. In their rst selection round of publications they nd 250 publications; this number is reduced to 80 publications to be included in the analysis. However, no method for excluding the 170 publications is presented in the paper. In order to structure their analysis of the 80 publications, they selected six different areas for classication of the publications: implementation, optimisation, management through ERP, the ERP tools, ERP and supply-chain management software and case studies, which they state have constituted a rather consistent framework for classifying the publications. From their analysis they draw several conclusions, one being that ERP research is published in a variety of journals; another that ERP captures the attention of several research disciplines. At the same time they nd very few multi-disciplinary studies. Even though this study provides the reader with an overview of the ERP eld in 2003 and 2004, we will question whether the study does give an overview of the ERP eld. Another point of criticism is that the reader is not provided with an insight into how the numbers are reduced from 250 to 80. Cumbie et al. (2005) analyse 49 ERP publications published between 1999 and 2004 in eight top information systems (IS) journals and seven top operations management (OM) journals with the aim of identifying gaps and motivating other researchers to close such gaps. They analyse 49 ERP publications published in the journals chosen according to both content and methods, using well-documented methods in three phases: selection, classication and analysis and synthesis. They nd an increasing level of activity during the ve-year period, with a slightly biased distribution of ERP publications in IS journals compared with OM journals, and also that several research methods are either underrepresented or absent. During their analysis of the publications, three general areas emerge: implementation, operation and benets. Of the publications, 28 focused on implementation, 14 on operation and seven on benets. The review presents a well-structured method for collecting and analysing the publications, but only publications published in top journals, 15 in total, from two
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research disciplines are included, and the review does not provide an overview of the ERP research eld. Esteves and Bohorquez (2007) categorise 640 publications mainly published in 23 IS journals and ten IS conferences from 2001 to 2005 through an ERP life-cycle-based framework. The goal of their study is to provide an updated annotated bibliography of ERP publications categorising the publications through an ERP life-cycle framework structured in phases. Of the publications, 25 are categorised as focusing on adoption, 15 on acquisition, 207 on implementation, 68 on usage, 59 on evolution, zero on retirement, 35 on education and nally 40 publications were categorised as general: papers not related to the ERP life cycle. Esteves and Bohorquez (2007) state that ERP systems offer potential areas for research and, due to their pervasive nature, ERP systems are of interest to a wide range of professional and scholarly disciplines (from software engineering to accounting), and not only the eld of IS. They further suggest that ERP-related research could and should be interdisciplinary. They classify the papers according to topic, not according to methods, and only look at the IS discipline, providing the reader with only a limited overview of the eld. None of the existing literature reviews include publications published after 2005, which leaves the ERP eld with a knowledge gap about publications published from 2005 onwards. Additionally, none of the reviews provide an overview of the total number of academic journal publications regardless of and/or across research disciplines, leaving a knowledge gap about the entire ERP eld. Our review sets out to ll this gap and aims at providing an overview of the ERP eld by analysing ERP peer-reviewed journal publications from 2000 to 2009. In the review we will answer and address the following questions: (1) How many peer-reviewed publications have been published each year and how has the eld evolved? (2) Which journals have published ERP peer-reviewed publications and which have published the highest number of publications? (3) Which authors have contributed the most? (4) Which disciplines have contributed to the ERP eld? (5) Which topics have been studied? (6) Which methods have been used? We also discuss the questions raised below: (7) (8) (9) (10) Is it fair to state that the ERP eld has matured? Is the ERP research eld a new research discipline? Is the ERP research eld an interdisciplinary eld? Is it possible to develop a conceptual framework for important issues in regard to ERP systems to be used by researchers and practitioners interested in ERP systems? (11) Is the methodological framework usable to analyse a specic aspect of ERP, e.g. BPR? The methodology used for conducting the literature study, making it possible to answer and address the above questions, will be presented in the following.
3. Methodology To be able to gain an overview of a research eld and answer the questions above, a structured research methodology is needed. The methodology is divided into two phases (Cumbie et al., 2005) (see Figure 1). The rst phase is the search for and selection of papers to include in the review, and the second phase is the classication of the papers. In the rst phase has to decide which types of publication, e.g. journal publications, conference papers or books, to include in the review. Additionally, one has to decide in which period and where to search for papers, e.g. in specic journals, bibliography databases or conference proceedings, which keywords one wants to use in the search and where the keywords should appear, e.g. either the title, abstract or keywords of the paper. In the second phase, based on the questions one wants to address in the review, one has to develop a framework to use in the analysis of the publications. To make a comprehensive literature study of a vast amount of publications, the framework includes two different types of analysis, one being strict head counts and the other being the classication of papers (see Figure 1). The head counts are simply a matter of counting, e.g. how many different journals have published papers about the phenomenon in question, how many different publications have been published per year and how many different authors have contributed to the eld. To be able to perform a classication analysis one needs rst of all the taxonomy according to which the papers will be classied. The content of this taxonomy will depend on the questions one wants to address during the review. After the development of the taxonomy, the classication process of the papers can begin. During the classication process different analysis approaches can be used, e.g. a classication system that includes a quest for regularity and standards as well as topics encompassed by the data (Bogdan and Biklen, 1982), content analysis using a constant comparative method (Cavana et al., 2001) or content analysis using different coding techniques, e.g. open coding, axial
Figure 1. Methodological framework for comprehensive literature studies
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coding or selective coding (Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Strauss and Corbin, 1994; Webster and Watson, 2002). The choice of analytical approach will depend on the questions one wants to address in the review. Our literature review was carried out in accordance with these two phases: phase 1 selection and accumulation of a journal publication pool and phase 2 classication of the publications by research discipline, topic studied and methods used. The two phases will be discussed in the following paragraphs. 3.1 Phase 1: selection and accumulation of a journal publication pool The rst decisions we had to make were which period to include in the literature study. Not many journal publications were published prior to 2000, e.g. Esteves and Pastor (2001) and Shehab et al. (2004) were able to nd very few published journal papers about ERP prior to 2000, and Aloini et al. (2007) only included literature published after 1999 in their review on ERP and risk management. It therefore seems reasonable to conclude that publications about ERP systems were rather rare before 2000, and that they emerged in 2000 and onwards. We therefore decided to gather publications from the period from 2000 to 2009. We chose to include only journal publications in the review. There are two main reasons for concentrating on journal papers: (1) journal papers contain more up-to-date data than books (Dale et al., 2001); and (2) conference papers can be difcult to access. We chose to search for journal publications in academic journals we had access to through the library web-search facilities. Nine different bibliographies databases were used, which gave us access to a very high number of journals (see Table II). The publications were gathered in three time slots, one in 2004, another at the beginning of 2008 and the last in late December 2009. During the time span between the three time slots in the gathering of publications, the coverage of the databases changed slightly and some databases changed names and publishers, as also illustrated in Table II. The papers were, as mentioned previously, collected in three time slots, one in 2004 (the result of this was previously reported in Mller et al. (2004)) the second at the beginning of 2008 and the last in December 2009. In each of these databases we searched for the keywords ERP and Enterprise Resource Planning within titles, abstracts or keywords. To exclude editorial comments and, e.g. book reviews, the length of the papers had to be at least four pages. From this initial search we ended up with a total pool of 1,564 journal publications. During the export of these journal publications to our EndNote database[1,2], 176 publications were excluded since they turned out to have been included in the total pool of publications twice and another 139 publications were excluded as it was obvious from their titles that the particular publications did not deal with ERP systems, but had used the acronym ERP for something very different, e.g. event-related brain potential, and 62 papers were excluded since they were published in the 53 different journals not included in the databases before 2008 and to include them would give us data that were not comparable, leaving us with a total pool of 1,196 journal publications for analysis and classication in phase 2.
Emerald
ScienceDirect (Elsevier) Wiley InterScience EBSCO (Business Source Premier)
ProQuest General BusinessFile
Digital Article Database Service (DADS)
ACM Digital Library AIS Library
Emerald publishes a range of management titles and library and information services titles by any publisher worldwide. The subjects covered include management, HRM, marketing, librarianship, mechanical engineering, electronic and electrical engineering ScienceDirect is an electronic collection of science, technology and medicine full text and bibliographic information Wiley InterScience provides access to publications from John Wiley & Sons. It features over 1,000 journals EBSCO Publishing offers a wide range of full text and bibliographic databases, and via EBSCOhost the database Business Source Premier was reached as well The ProQuest online information service provides access to thousands of current periodicals and newspapers General BusinessFile International provides access to a combination of international broker research reports, trade publications, newspapers, journals and company directories. It was later renamed Business & Company Resource Centre DADS provides access to data from several providers, including databases (such as ABI/Inform, COMPENDEX and INSPEC), publishers (such as Academic Press, Blackwell Publishers, Elsevier, Emerald, Karger, Kluwer, Oxford University Press, Springer, Swetscan) and organisations (such as IEEE/IEE Electronic Library IEL) The library contains 54,000 online articles from 30 journals and 900 proceedings from the Association for Computing Machinery A service from the Association of Information Systems providing full-text access to journals and conferences sponsored by AIS
Table II. Bibliographical databases included
During phase 2 an additional 303 journal publications were excluded. Their exclusion was based on four different criteria: (1) publications only mentioning ERP or Enterprise Resource Planning systems as an example of one system among other systems; (2) some were excluded if ERP or Enterprise Resource Planning systems were only mentioned as contextual variables; (3) editorial notes were excluded; and nally (4) if no abstract existed, the publication was excluded as well. The nal pool of publications had then been reduced to 885 to be included in the literature review.
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3.2 Phase 2: analysis In this phase we started out by making the head count. We were, as mentioned previously, interested in disclosing how the eld had evolved during the period, which journals had published ERP papers and nally which authors had contributed to the eld. This was a rather easy task. We: . counted the number of papers published per year; . made a list of the journals that had published ERP articles; . made a list of the journals that had published the highest number of papers; and . identied the authors who had contributed the most publications. After the head count, the classication of papers according to the taxonomy, containing in our case contributing research disciplines, dealt-with-topics and used methods (see Section 2), began. To be able to address the rst area of interest which disciplines had contributed we carried out a preliminary reading of the abstracts. During this preliminary reading ve different disciplines emerged (see Table III for the different disciplines according to which we classied the papers). This set of disciplines was to a great extent coherent with earlier observations made by Botta-Genoulaz et al. (2005), who classied ERP research with regard to computer science, information systems, management and operations management/SCM. To classify each journal we either used the discipline that the journal itself refers to on its web page, read the aim and goal or classied the journals according to ve different disciplines[3]. On account of the subjective nature of classication of the papers according to method and research topic, we decided to carry out a content analysis, thus providing a more rigorous process (Cumbie et al., 2005), and to develop a coding form containing the categories into which to classify the papers. The coding form was created during a joint pilot study of 20 per cent of the papers, equalling 177 papers. During the pilot study we jointly read the abstract and used the techniques from open coding principles (Neuman, 1997) to develop the categories to use in the classication of the papers according to method used and topic of interest. In developing the categories, prior to the pilot study, we gained inspiration from previous studies. For developing categories for the used method, the classication by Piccolo and Ives (2005) case study(ies), archival, theoretical and survey served as
Discipline Information systems Accounting Organisation and management Operation management Computer science Denition Journals focusing on use or management aspects of information technology Journals focusing on accounting or related themes such as nancial matters Journals focusing on organisational and management issues as such, that do not have an explicit technical view Journals focusing on an engineering tradition, e.g. focusing on production planning and control Journals focusing on technical aspects of information technology Journals focusing on aspects not included in the abovementioned ve disciplines
Table III. Research disciplines
Other
the inspiration source; for developing the categories for research topic, the categories by Botta-Genoulaz et al. (2005) implementation, optimisation, management, ERP tool and supply-chain management served as the inspiration source. During the pilot study we continued to add new categories if the topic or method used in the particular paper was not covered by the categories already identied, until no new categories were found (Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Strauss and Corbin, 1994; Webster and Watson, 2002). After the joint pilot study we had compiled a coding form consisting of nine categories to be used in the classication of papers according to used methods and nine categories for the classication of papers according to research topic (see Tables IV and V). Since analysing and classifying 885 papers based on abstracts is a time-consuming job, we decided to split the total pool of papers into two (including those from the pilot study), analysing and classifying 442 each, using the coding form developed during the pilot study. During the classication, we physically sat in the same room, and when one of us had difculties in classifying a paper, we both read the abstract and discussed it until we agreed on a classication. With regard to classication according to the method used, various categories and schemes have previously been applied among researchers. As mentioned previously, we set out to classify the publications in accordance with the methodology classication used by Piccolo and Ives (2005). This classication scheme could not, however, cover the whole ERP literature base, and it was necessary to develop more categories. We added: descriptive, experiment, design science, combination of methods and a category that we named not mentioned. See Table IV for the methodological categories used and their descriptions. Piccolo and Ives do not dene the four categories they use; for this purpose we were inspired by Chen and Hirschheim (2004). As regards classication according to research topic, we set out to classify the papers in accordance with the topic classication used by Botta-Genoulaz et al. (2005):
Category Case study(ies) Archival Theoretical Survey Experiment Descriptive Design science Combined Not mentioned Description Papers reporting on studies that are involved with a single site or a few sites often over a certain period of time are located in this category Papers using secondary data such as public records, existing data sets and statistics fall into this category Papers analysing existing theory, typically with the aim of developing new theory, fall into this category Papers that fall into this category gather data by means of questionnaires This includes papers using either laboratory or eld experiments Papers solely describing or arguing for a phenomenon and often very practically oriented Papers that construct systems and/or tools fall into this category Papers using a combination of the above-mentioned categories fall into this category Papers that do not mention any methods either explicitly or implicitly
Table IV. Methodology categories
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Topic Implementation
Issues addressed and description How the ERP system can be introduced into the organisation including papers concerning selection, the various steps of implementation and related problems, critical success factors, business process alignment during the implementation and organisational diffusion How ERP can be used better in the organisation including papers concerning post-implementation, usefulness, achievement of competitive advantage through ERP, ERP users, nancial benets of ERP and ERPII in an organisational context How the implementation of ERP affects the management and the organisation including papers concerning managerial issues of implementation, the ERP impact on the organisation, organisational changes, ERP and best practices, cultural issues in ERP use and nally papers concerning understanding ERP as a phenomenon What are ERP systems and ERP modules and applications? Papers concerned with systems architecture, systems language and integration norms, customisation, add-ons to ERP systems and nally ERPII systems as tools How ERP systems can be used in the context of a group of companies papers concerning the use of ERP systems in system integration with other information technologies and systems and ERP contribution to cooperation in supply chains are included in this category How ERP systems may be studied papers concerning how ERP systems can or should be studied, using various frameworks, are included in this category How education and training in ERP systems can be included in university curricula papers concerning the development of ERP courses, integrating ERP systems into existing university programmes and lessons learned from doing so are included in this category How the ERP systems market evolves papers concerning market demands, market share of different vendors, macro diffusion of ERP in particular industries and/or geographic areas are included in this category Papers that do not t into any of the above categories
496
Optimisation of ERP
Management and ERP issues
The ERP tool
ERP and supply chain management
Studying ERP ERP and education
The ERP market and industry Table V. Topic classication
Others
implementation, optimisation, management, the ERP tool and supply-chain management. We chose to exclude their sixth category case studies since we regard this as a method and not a research topic. During the pilot study we found that these ve categories did not cover the entire range of topics published within the ERP eld. Three additional categories were formulated: studying ERP, ERP and education and the ERP market and industry. Table V describes each topic in more detail. 4. Findings about the ERP eld In this section our ndings from the literature study will be presented, and we will start by answering the rst questions formulated in section 2: how many peer-reviewed
publications have been published each year, how has the eld evolved, which journals have published ERP peer-reviewed publications and which have published the highest number of publications? Which authors have contributed? 4.1 Publications and journals The total number of peer-reviewed journal publications was found to be 885. The number of papers published per year was rather steady until 2003 (see Figure 2), when 116 papers were published, the highest number of papers published in one year. After 2003 the number of publications in 2004 was 105, and the number of papers published in 2005 and 2006 reached a similar level as at the beginning of the century. In 2007 the number of publications dropped to 66, the lowest in the period, followed by an increase in 2008 with 96 papers published, nally to reach a yearly publication rate of 66 in 2009. The high increase in number in 2008 can be explained from our data by the introduction of new journals with a special interest in ERP systems, e.g. the International Journal of Enterprise Systems in 2005, and a rather large amount of papers about ERP in developing countries by the end of the period. When we looked at the distribution of published ERP research papers, we found that 226 different journals had published ERP papers from 2000 to 2009 which equals 3.9 papers on average in each publishing journal over the entire period. Approximately 50 per cent of the papers had been published by 20 journals, and three journals, Industrial Management & Data Systems, the Business Process Management Journal and the Journal of Enterprise Information Management (see Table VI), had each published more than 30 papers: in total these 120 papers equal 13 per cent of the pool. Accounting for 10 per cent of the pool, ve journals from various disciplines had published 20-29 papers each, 16 journals had published around ten to 19 ERP papers each, accounting for 23 per cent of the pool, and nally 25 journals had published between ve and nine ERP papers, accounting for 18 per cent of the pool. The remaining 348 papers, 37 per cent, had been published in more than 230 different journals (see Table VII). The ten most publishing journals (the ten most publishing journals and the exact number of publications each year can be found in Table VIII) have published approximately 30 per cent of the total pool and they have published 2.7 on average each year. The publication range of numbers and journals publishing ERP papers has changed during the period (see Figure 3). The Business Process Management Journal, which has published 43 papers since 2000, published 13 ERP papers in 2001 and 3.75
Figure 2. Number of ERP journal publications per year
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30 20-29
498
10-19
Table VI. Journals with ten or more papers published
Business Process Management Journal Industrial Management & Data Systems Journal of Enterprise Information Management International Journal of Production Economics Communications of the ACM Information & Management Computers in Industry International Journal of Enterprise Information Systems Information Systems Management Strategic Finance Journal of Computer Information Systems European Journal of Operational Research Journal of Information Systems Education International Journal of Operations & Production Management Systems Research and Behavioral Science Decision Support Systems Expert Systems with Applications Information Systems Frontiers International Journal of Production Research Journal of Strategic Information Systems Information Systems Journal Journal of Information Technology
Journals n 30 20-29 10-19 5-9 1-4 Total 3 5 16 25 177 226 (%) 1 2 7 11 78 100 n 120 93 218 167 286 885
Papers (%) 14 10 25 19 32 100
Sum (%) 14 24 49 68 100
Table VII. Journals publishing ERP-related research
papers on average in the period from 2002 to 2006, but after that it did not publish any ERP papers; in 2008 and 2009 it again published papers, seven each year. A similar pattern can be found for Industrial Management & Data Systems, which also published 43 ERP papers in the period 2000-2009, niine papers in 2004 and on average 5.33 papers per year until 2006, but did not publish any ERP papers in 2007; in 2008 and 2009 it again published papers, ve and six respectively. Another journal, which has published more than 30 papers, the Journal of Enterprise Information Management, did not publish any papers until 2004 and published seven papers on average per year in the period 2004-2006, whereas no publications were found in 2007, and again in 2008 it published ve papers and in 2009, eight papers. The most publishing journals in the period did not publish any papers in 2007, but did publish above average ERP publications in 2008 and 2009. The International Journal of Enterprise Information Systems did not publish any papers on ERP before 2007 and published as many as 11 papers in 2008.
Journal 1 2 0 0 13 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 2 0 3 0 1 1 1 2 3 1 0 3 5 0 3 2 7 1 13 2 0 0 1 0 1 2 5 0 2 1 3 1 3 4 0 0 2 2 0 3 9 7 3 3 4 2 7 6 6 5 0 0 11 0 4 8 3 1 1 0 0 0 0 4 0 5 3
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008 7 5 5 5 1 5 1 3 11 2
2009 7 6 8 3 1 2 2 0 1 2
Total 43 43 34 25 23 23 22 19 19 18
Business Process Management Journal Industrial Management & Data Systems Journal of Enterprise Information Management International Journal of Production Economics Communications of the ACM Information & Management Computers in Industry International Journal of Accounting and Information Systems International Journal of Enterprise and Information Systems Information Systems Management
Table VIII. Publication in the ten most ERP publishing journals over time
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Figure 3. Journals over time
In total 1,639 different authors, either as single authors or as co-authors, have contributed to the total pool of papers; 1,297 authors have contributed to a single paper only and 190 to two papers etc. (see Table IX). The most contributing author was S.C. Lenny Koh with 12 publications, followed by E. Bendoly with ten papers. A. Gunasekaran has published nine papers and D.C. Yen, eight papers. Four authors have contributed seven papers each, three contributed six and, nally, seven authors have contributed ve papers (see Table X).
Publications 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Note: 1,564 different authors
Number of authors 1,297 190 36 21 8 3 5 1 1 1 0 1
Table IX. Authors and publications
4.2 Research disciplines Of the papers, 31 per cent were published in operations management, being the most contributing discipline (see Figure 4), equalling 309 papers (see Table XI for the exact number of papers in each discipline over time). The second most contributing discipline is information systems, which has contributed 233 of the publications, 24 per cent of the pool. Computer science contributed with 15 per cent followed closely by organisation and management with 13 per cent of the publications. Accounting accounts for the smallest number of publications, namely 9 per cent, and nally we were not able to classify 8 per cent of the papers according to the categories used.
Number of publications 12 10 9 8 7 7 7 7 6 6 6 5 5 5 5 5 5 5
Author S.C. Lenny Koh E. Bendoly A. Gunasekaran D.C. Yen A. Halingten E.T.G. Wang J. Verville T.M. Somers F.F.-H. Nah J. van Hillegersberg M. Al-Mashari B. Light C. Soh G. Klein J.E. Scott J.J. Jiang V.A. Mabert Y.M. Everdingen
Table X. The most publishing authors
Figure 4. Percentage of papers published in different disciplines
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Information systems Accounting Organisation and management Operations management (SCM) Computer science Other
Information systems (%) Accounting (%) Organisation and management (%) Operations management (SCM) (%) Computer science (%) Other (%) (%)
Table XI. Number of papers in each discipline over time 2000 17 7 11 16 27 6 84 20 8 13 19 32 7 100 11 12 9 33 11 11 87 13 14 10 38 13 13 100 26 9 11 26 12 9 93 28 10 12 28 13 10 100 26 14 11 35 16 14 116 22 12 9 30 14 12 100 34 8 11 36 10 6 105 32 8 10 34 10 6 100 21 5 12 34 13 3 88 24 6 14 39 15 3 100 18 8 24 24 5 5 84 21 10 29 29 6 6 100 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 22 2 6 19 11 6 66 33 3 9 29 17 9 100 2008 30 7 4 44 7 5 97 31 7 4 45 7 5 100 2009 20 3 5 29 7 2 66 30 5 8 44 11 3 100 Total 225 75 104 296 119 67 886 24 9 13 31 15 8 100
In general the number of publications over time in each discipline (see Figure 5) seems to have been rather stable during 2000 to 2009, with minor exceptions (see Table XI and Figure 6 for the exact number of published papers in each discipline). One exception is the discipline organisation and management, where the highest number of publications was found in 2006, with more than twice as many papers published that year as in 2003 and 2004. The information systems disciplines seem to have kept their rather high number of publications during the period, and the percentage of the total number of papers increased during the period. In 2007 papers published within the information systems discipline accounted for 33 per cent of the total number of papers published, whereas the information systems discipline only accounted for 24 per cent on average. The most contributing discipline to the ERP research eld is operation management, accounting for 31 per cent of the publications. 4.3 Research topics Of the research within ERP, 80 per cent can be classied as falling into 4 different research topics. The highest percentage of research, 30 per cent, focused on
Figure 5. Disciplines over time
Figure 6. Discipline over time (numbers)
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implementation aspects, 20 per cent on managing and ERP systems, 17 per cent on optimisation of ERP and nally 14 per cent on the ERP tool itself (see Figure 7). The last 19 per cent is divided between the remaining research topics. The changes in research topics of interest (see Figure 8) have only changed slightly during the period. Most research topics implementation, supply-chain management, how to study and education have been rather stable with no remarkable variation in the percentage of papers being published within these topics. Research into the ERP tool and the ERP market and industry has changed during the period, in that it has been reduced by 50 per cent from the rst half of the period to the second half. The percentage of research in the topic managing and ERP increased slightly until 2007, representing as many as 25 per cent of the papers published in 2007, whereas afterwards it dropped to the same level as at the beginning of the period, approximately 15 per cent. Research into the optimisation of ERP has increased
Figure 7. Percentage of papers presenting different topics
Figure 8. Topics over time
steadily during the period from only representing 11 per cent in 2000 to representing 30 per cent of the publications in 2009 (see Table XII and Figure 9 for detailed numbers of publications within the category research topic). 4.4 Research methods As regards methods used in studying ERP, case studies have been the most prevalent and were used in 22 per cent of the papers (see Figure 10), followed by papers using surveys, which account for 15 per cent. A total of 12 per cent of the papers have used a descriptive and/or normative method; 11 per cent of the papers have been strictly theoretical; 9 per cent have used design-science methods; 8 per cent of the papers have used archival methods; 5 per cent have used combined methods; and only 2 per cent have used experimental methods. We were not able to classify 16 per cent of the papers on the basis of the abstract, since no methodological consideration was mentioned at all (see Table XIII and Figure 11 for detailed numbers of publications within the research method category). The methods used (see Figure 12) have changed during the period. The most remarkable change has taken place in the categories not mentioned, theoretical and survey. Whereas in 2000 as many as 43 per cent of the published papers did not mention the research method in their abstracts, this was only approximately 5 per cent of the papers in 2007, 2008 and 2009. Theoretically based papers increased from only representing 4 per cent of the papers published in 2000 to representing on average 14 per cent of the papers published in the last three years. An even more remarkable change can be found in the category survey. In 2000 6 per cent of the published papers used survey data, whereas 29 per cent did in 2009. The percentage use of case studies was the same in 2000 and in 2009, approximately 17 per cent, whereas almost 30 per cent of the papers from 2002 to 2005 used case studies. Experimental studies were not published until 2002, after which the percentage of papers using experimental methods increased to 8 per cent of the published papers in 2009. The rest of the used-method categories have represented a rather stable percentage of the published papers during the period (see Table XIII and Figure 11 for detailed numbers of publications within the category methods). 5. Discussion of the ndings In this section we discuss the ndings and address the previously raised discussion questions: is it fair to state that the ERP eld has matured, has the ERP research eld become a new research discipline, is the ERP research eld is an interdisciplinary eld? Further we present a conceptual framework for important issues in regards to ERP systems and nally we discuss the structured methodological framework usefulness in analysing a specic aspect of interest in regards ERP system, here BPR. In the previous section we raised the question of whether it is fair to state that the ERP eld has become mature. To address this question we analysed which methods the different journal publications had used. Our ndings suggest that the dominating method used has been case studies with a slight decline in the last part of the period, 15 per cent of the papers in 2009, whereas surveys had already taken over as the most used method in 2006. Only 5 per cent of the publications had used surveys in 2000; this percentage increased remarkably during the time of investigation to 29 per cent in 2009. At the same time there was a dramatic fall in papers that did not mention which
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Implementation Optimisation of ERP Managing and ERP systems The ERP tool ERP and supply chain management How to study ERP Education ERP market and industry Other (combined)
Implementation (%) Optimisation of ERP (%) Managing and ERP systems (%) The ERP tool (%) ERP and supply chain management (%) How to study ERP (%) Education (%) ERP market and industry (%) Other (combined) (%) (%)
Table XII. Research topic over time 2000 22 9 11 20 6 1 3 7 24 84 26 11 13 24 7 1 4 8 6 100 21 15 20 13 6 1 3 6 2 87 24 17 23 15 7 1 3 7 2 100 25 16 15 16 6 2 5 7 1 93 27 17 16 17 6 2 5 8 1 100 39 14 16 24 5 1 1 13 3 116 34 12 14 21 4 1 1 11 3 100 24 21 16 13 10 2 10 7 2 105 23 20 15 12 10 2 10 7 2 100 29 19 20 8 8 1 0 3 0 88 33 22 23 9 9 1 0 3 0 100 27 16 21 6 4 2 1 7 0 84 32 19 25 7 5 2 1 8 0 100 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 22 14 14 6 4 3 2 1 0 66 33 21 21 9 6 5 3 2 0 100 2008 35 26 10 11 9 0 3 3 0 97 36 27 10 11 9 0 3 3 0 100 2009 18 24 7 7 3 0 2 4 1 66 27 36 11 11 5 0 3 6 2 100 Total 262 174 150 124 61 13 30 58 14 886 30 20 17 14 7 1 3 7 2 100
Figure 9. Research topics over time (numbers)
Figure 10. Percentage of papers based on different methods
method they had used, from 43 per cent to 3 per cent in 2009. When we combine the above with the fact that the number of theoretical papers rose from 4 per cent to 14 per cent, it is fair to state that the ERP eld has matured, the amount of theoretical papers has increased and at the same time publication demands for explicating the research methods used have increased remarkably during the period 2000-2009. To address the question of whether the ERP research eld is a new research discipline, we analysed our ndings according to the number of published papers, contributions from authors and the evolution within numbers of publications in specic journals. The number of published papers reached its highest in 2003 with 116 papers. After 2003 the number reduced year by year (2008 being an exception) to 66 papers in 2009, clearly indicating that the interest has declined. Additionally, our ndings show that a lot of different authors and journals have contributed to the ERP research eld: 1,654 authors have contributed to the 885 papers published in 227 different journals, a variety of authors have contributed only one or few publications
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Case study(ies) Archival Theoretical Survey Combination Design science Not mentioned Descriptive/normative Experimental
Case study(ies) (%) Archival (%) Theoretical (%) Survey (%) Combination (%) Design science (%) Not mentioned (%) Descriptive/normative (%) Experimental (%) (%)
Table XIII. Research methods over time 2000 14 6 3 5 2 7 36 11 0 84 17 7 4 6 2 8 43 13 0 100 18 7 8 5 4 4 25 16 0 87 21 8 9 6 5 5 29 18 0 100 22 7 4 5 3 10 20 20 2 93 24 8 4 5 3 11 22 22 2 100 34 12 4 16 1 16 20 12 1 116 29 10 3 14 1 14 17 10 1 100 22 8 17 13 5 12 13 12 3 105 21 8 16 12 5 11 12 11 3 100 24 11 8 15 5 10 7 8 0 88 27 13 9 17 6 11 8 9 0 100 15 5 14 16 9 6 11 5 3 84 18 6 17 19 11 7 13 6 4 100 11 7 11 19 1 6 3 6 2 66 17 11 17 29 2 9 5 9 3 100 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 21 4 21 20 6 8 6 8 3 97 22 4 22 21 6 8 6 8 3 100 2009 10 6 9 19 5 4 2 6 5 66 15 9 14 29 8 6 3 9 8 100 Total 191 73 99 133 41 83 143 104 19 886 22 8 11 15 5 9 16 12 2 100
Figure 11. Methods over time (numbers)
Figure 12. Methods over time
and fewer than 15 per cent of the authors have contributed three or more papers. Our ndings indicate that a great variety of authors have contributed only one or a few papers to the eld. The fact that the most publishing journals during the period did not publish any papers in 2007 and that the journals that published the highest amount of papers in 2009 published above their own average leaves us to suggest that the quick movers as regards publishing ERP research lost interest in ERP-related research after a while, and that the journals that published ERP papers at the end of the period were slow starters and were dominating as the publication channel at the end of the period. These ndings leave us to suggest that the publications on ERP were the result of an interest in an empirical phenomenon, from both authors and journals, and that the interest declined during the second half of the period. It seems fair to suggest that
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the interest in ERP was the result of a temporary widespread interest in an empirical phenomenon, rather than the beginning of a new research discipline. The next discussion point that we want to address is whether the ERP research eld is an interdisciplinary eld as suggested by Esteves and Bohorquez (2007). Esteves and Bohorquez (2007) further state that ERP-related research could and should be interdisciplinary. It is one thing to suggest and discuss; to reect on real research practice is another. Our ndings show that the ERP research eld has been an interdisciplinary eld. Our list of ve different research disciplines accounts for more than 90 per cent of all the papers, and the distribution of papers among disciplines is quite balanced applying the taxonomy we have used. Even though the two disciplines of operations management (SCM) and information systems (IS) together count for 55 per cent of all the papers, no discipline can be said to be predominant. Based on the ndings above our study conrms that the eld of ERP is very much an interdisciplinary eld. Esteves and Pastor (2001) suggest in their paper that ERP systems offer many potential areas for research and, due to their pervasive nature at that time, they expected ERP systems to be of interest to a wide range of scholarly disciplines (from software engineering to accounting). Their suggestions have come true and the ERP research eld has indeed been interdisciplinary. The next question that we set out to discuss based on the literature review was the question of whether it is possible to develop a conceptual framework of areas of concern in regard to ERP. Based on the literature study we believe this is indeed possible. Using an open coding technique in the content analysis of the 885 abstracts with the purpose of dividing the categories to be used into the classication of the papers gave us a good indication of the issues of concern (see Figure 13). An indication of the relevant issues in each area of concern will be presented in terms of questions to be asked: (1) Implementation: . Which criteria should be used in selecting the ERP system, e.g. how well does the ERP system t the business strategy (Wei et al., 2005; Wei and Wang, 2004)? . Which strategy should the implementation use, e.g. the comprehensive, middle road or vanilla implementation strategy (Parr and Shanks, 2000)? . Should a business process reengineering process take place before or simultaneously with the ERP implementation (Koch, 2001b)? . Which work tasks and organisational and managerial challenges can be expected in each phase of the implementation (Markus et al., 2000; Kraemmergaard and Rose, 2002)? . Which critical success factors should we have in mind during the implementation (Ngai et al., 2008; Dezdar and Sulaiman, 2009)? (2) Optimisation and post-implementation: . How can we prioritise between the different ERP maintenance initiatives (Ng et al., 2002)? . How can we optimise the use of the ERP system in the organisation? . How can we examine the process of system review during the post-implementation phase (Nicolaou, 2004)?
Figure 13. Conceptual framework for areas of concern regarding ERP systems
Which business benets of ERP systems evolve during the post-implementation period (Staehr, 2010)? . Which strategic, managerial, operational and organisational benets are the result of the ERP implementation (Shang and Seddon, 2002)? (3) Management and organisation: . Which organisational changes and impact can be expected implementing an ERP system and can they be predicted (Rikhardsson and Kraemmergaard, 2006)? . How do the communities exhibit distinct culture guides but also constrain practice in regard to ERP implementation and use (Wagner and Newell, 2004)? . How do the characteristics of ERP systems (specically its integration, standardisation, routinisation and centralisation) facilitate and reinforce processes of management accounting change (Scapens and Jazayeri, 2003)?
.
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(5)
(6)
(7)
(8)
To want extent does the ERP-led BPR implementation leads to fundamental changes within an organisations structure, culture and management process (Huq et al., 2006)? The ERP tool: . What are ERP systems (Kumar and van Hillegersberg, 2000)? . How is an ERP constructed (Sprott, 2000)? . How can ERP systems be customised and congured (Volkoff, 2003)? . How to integrate ERP systems and other systems (Frank, 2004; Wang et al., 2005; Zhang et al., 2006)? . How can be expected to be the future development of ERP systems (Ford, 2000; Smets-Solanes and de Carvalho, 2003; Mller, 2005)? Supply chain management and ERP: . How can ERP be used as a technology enabler for supply chain management (Boubekri, 2001)? . Which impact will ERP have on supply chain management (Akkermans et al., 2003)? . How well are the integration of the supply chain management and the ERP systems for competing in the future supply chain (Lenny Koh et al., 2006)? . How can ERP and SCM systems be integrated with CRM, PLM, e-procurement and e-marketplaces to foster cooperation and collaboration across the entire value chain (Nah, 2004)? Studying ERP: . What has over time been written about ERP (Botta-Genoulaz et al., 2005; Esteves and Bohorquez, 2007)? . What are the calls for and suggestion on ERP research agendas and issues (Lee, 2000; OLeary, 2002; Sutton, 2006)? Education and training: . How to teach and compose the content of an ERP course (McComb and Shari, 2002; Nielson, 2002; Boyle, 2007)? . How can different courses be integrated using ERP systems (Cannon et al., 2004; Johnson et al., 2004)? . Where and how has ERP inuenced the IS curriculum (Becerra-Fernandez et al., 2000; Bradford et al., 2003; Antonucci et al., 2004; Hawking et al., 2004)? Market and industry: . How are ERP systems adopted in specic country, e.g. India or Greece (Tarafdar and Roy, 2003; Kostopoulos et al., 2004)? . How can ERP systems be supplied to customers, e.g. through ASPs (Bennett and Timbrell, 2000; Ekanayaka et al., 2002)?
.
How are ERP systems adopted in a specic industry or type of companies (Everdingen et al., 2000; Craighead and Laforge, 2003; Yang et al., 2006)? What are the market share and demand of ERP (Arnesen and Thompson, 2003)?
The last discussion point we want to address is whether the methodological framework is usable to analyse a specic aspect of ERP e.g. BPR? To address this question we had to select the papers that dealt with BPR. To select these papers we searched the ERP EndNote le for papers with BPR or Business Process Re-engineering in either their titles, abstracts or keywords. This search left us with 42 papers in total. Making the head-count of the papers, showed that more than half of the papers addressed the topic of implementation, almost half were published within the operations management discipline and 38 per cent were using case study as a research method. The papers had been published by 24 different journals and only two authors; S. Subramoniam and M. Tounsi, have contributed with more than one paper. Comparing these ndings with the ndings of the total pool of 885 papers, indicates that BPR related ERP research to a higher degree than ERP research in general uses case study as a research method and relates it to implementation issues. Next we set out to nd out which theoretical lenses researchers have used to studying the link between ERP and BPR. We initially analysed the 42 papers by reading the abstracts. During this initial analysis 22 papers were excluded since they either were strictly descriptive papers or did not mention any link between ERP and BPR. This left us with 20 papers to analyse for theoretical lenses. The result of this analysis can be seen in Table XIV. Using this methodology quickly gave us insight into how the publications link ERP and BPR in the ERP research eld. Our ndings show that different theoretical lenses have been used, that theory on critical success factors is dominant in eight out of the 20 papers, followed by theory on process modelling. The Business Process Management Journal accounts for almost half of the publications using theoretical lenses. The question as to whether the methodological framework can be used to analyse a specic aspect of ERP, is yes. In a short time we got valuable insight into the aspect of BPR within the ERP research eld. This insight is believed to be useful for researchers who want to study the link between BPR and ERP using theoretical lenses and researchers who want to position their own research within the eld, e.g. what has already been done and which theoretical lenses will be able to provide new insight. Finally using the methodological framework quickly gave us an understanding of which journals that had published the highest number of papers studying the link between ERP and BPR using theoretical lenses. 6. Conclusion and implications We set out to conduct a comprehensive literature review on ERP based on a vast amount of papers published. To be able to conduct such a review we developed a methodological framework, consisting of two phases: phase one, selecting and accumulating the publication pool, and phase two, analysing the publication pool. Using this framework for conducting the comprehensive literature review provided us with an overview of the ERP research eld regardless of research disciplines, research
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Theoretical lens Critical success factors
Journal Business Process Management Journal International Journal of Operations & Production Management European Journal of Operational Research European Journal of Operational Research International Journal of Enterprise Information Systems Business Process Management Journal Computers in Industry Business Process Management Journal Communications of the ACM Computers & Industrial Engineering Business Process Management Journal Journal of Organizational and End User Computing Industrial Engineer Business Process Management Journal Business Process Management Journal Journal of Change Management International Journal of Production Economics Business Process Management Journal
Author Nah and Lau (2001) Schrenederjans and Kim (2003) Somers and Nelson (2003) Umble et al. (2003) Emad (2007) Ming-Ling and Wade (2008) Ngai et al. (2008) El Sawah et al. (2008) Scheer and Habermann (2000) Chiplunkar et al. (2003) Samaranayake (2009) Burns et al. (2009) Subramoniam (2008) Newman and Zhao (2008) Koch (2001a) Huq et al. (2006) Byrne and Heavey (2006) Subramoniam and Tounsi (2009) Stijn and Wensley (2001) Lee (2008)
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Formal (business) modelling Connectionist model Innovation processes Organizational sociology Change management Supply chain theory Table XIV. Theoretical lenses used in BPR linked ERP research categorised by journals and authors Object orientation
Organizational memory Business Process Management Journal Adoption model Business Process Management Journal
topics and research traditions and a conceptual framework of areas of concern in regard to ERP systems. Furthermore we have tested whether the methodological framework may be useful to analyse a specic aspect of ERP. Our study reveals that more than 250 journals have published papers about ERP, and that the 20 most publishing journals have published approximately 30 per cent of the publications. The operation management discipline has published the largest amount of the papers, 31 per cent, followed by the IS discipline yielding 24 per cent of the publications, but no discipline has predominance. Studies on the implementation of ERP have been the most researched topic, accounting for 29 per cent of the papers, followed by studies on the management (18 per cent) and optimisation of ERP (17 per cent). Case studies have been the most used method, used in 22 per cent of the papers, but in the later part of the decade the use of this method is declining on the expense of, e.g. surveys. Additionally, our review and analysis reveal that the body of academic knowledge about ERP systems has reached a certain maturity, that the ERP research eld is very much an interdisciplinary eld and that the eld has been driven by an interest in an empirical phenomenon more than indicating that the ERP research is a new research discipline. Based on the classication of the papers according to the topic of interest a useful conceptual framework for areas of concern with regard to ERP systems has been
developed. Seven areas of concern were identied: implementation, post-implementation, organisational change and managerial implications, the ERP market and industry, education and training, supply-chain management and the ERP system itself, issues that have implications for both managers and researchers. For managers, the conceptual framework can assist in creating an understanding of the broad spectra issues of concern that one has to take into consideration in regard to ERP systems and the questions one needs to deal with and be aware of when involved with ERP systems. For researchers with an interest in ERP systems, the conceptual framework can be used for positioning their own research and interests, and in creating an understanding of the broader context of ERP-related research. The usefulness of the methodological framework developed in the present paper was conrmed by applying it to a specic aspect of ERP research, namely BPR. With a limited amount of efforts the 42 papers published on BPR and ERP were analysed showing that BPR related ERP research to a higher degree than ERP research in general is based on case-studies and is related to implementation issues. The main theoretical lens applied in the papers was that of critical success factors. The results can also be used to identify the journals favouring this type of papers (e.g. Business Process Management Journal ) thus providing guidelines for where to publish and an understanding of the nature of the specic (sub-)eld. Some would probably argue that other interesting analyses could have been performed and ndings found, based on the total pool of journal publications and the EndNote le, e.g. a citation analysis to see who has had the greatest impact in terms of references within the eld; a correlation analysis to see whether there is any correlation between topic and research discipline; a sub-literature review to analyse each discipline to see what the particular discipline has focused on; a sub-literature review to analyse trends and progress in academic knowledge in the different research topics, e.g. implementation during the period, etc. We would certainly support these arguments and hopefully others will take up these challenges. The free access to our EndNote le will hopefully serve as a motivator in this respect. We have provided the reader with an overview of the ERP research eld and a conceptual framework of the different areas of concern. The ndings can hopefully act as a foundation for researchers for further research in ERP, e.g. where to locate and publish different types of ERP-related research, and assist other researchers in the identication of related studies in the literature review phase of their work. Finally, the bibliographical EndNote database and its rich set of empirical data can hopefully be used by others in future research and analyses.
Notes 1. The EndNote database is available for free download at the web sites: www.asb.dk/article. aspx?pid 23792 2. Bibliographical data from each paper were organised in an End-Note database fully populated with meta-data and with easy access to a full-text library. 3. We used the term discipline to include (open) groups of scholars who interact, meet at conferences and publish in the same range of journals and may be members of the same association.
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A - Comprehensive Literature Review On ERP

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A comprehensive literature review of the ERP research eld over a decade

Review of the ERP research eld 487

Year 1 2 3 4 5 2001 2004 2005 2005 2007 2010

Papers 189 76 80 49 640 885

Span 1997-2000 1990-2003 2003-2004 1999-2004 1001-2005 2000-2009

Table I. Earlier literature reviews

Review of the ERP research eld 489

Review of the ERP research eld 491

Figure 1. Methodological framework for comprehensive literature studies

ScienceDirect (Elsevier) Wiley InterScience EBSCO (Business Source Premier)

ProQuest General BusinessFile

Digital Article Database Service (DADS)

ACM Digital Library AIS Library

Review of the ERP research eld 493

Table II. Bibliographical databases included

Table III. Research disciplines

Review of the ERP research eld 495

Table IV. Methodology categories

Management and ERP issues

The ERP tool

ERP and supply chain management

Studying ERP ERP and education

The ERP market and industry Table V. Topic classication

Review of the ERP research eld 497

Figure 2. Number of ERP journal publications per year

Table VI. Journals with ten or more papers published

Papers (%) 14 10 25 19 32 100

Sum (%) 14 24 49 68 100

Table VII. Journals publishing ERP-related research

Review of the ERP research eld 499

Figure 3. Journals over time

Publications 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Note: 1,564 different authors

Number of authors 1,297 190 36 21 8 3 5 1 1 1 0 1

Table IX. Authors and publications

Review of the ERP research eld 501

Table X. The most publishing authors

Figure 4. Percentage of papers published in different disciplines

Review of the ERP research eld 503

Figure 5. Disciplines over time

Figure 6. Discipline over time (numbers)

Figure 7. Percentage of papers presenting different topics

Figure 8. Topics over time

Review of the ERP research eld 505

Review of the ERP research eld 507

Figure 9. Research topics over time (numbers)

Figure 10. Percentage of papers based on different methods

Review of the ERP research eld 509

Figure 11. Methods over time (numbers)

Figure 12. Methods over time

Review of the ERP research eld 511

Review of the ERP research eld 513

Theoretical lens Critical success factors

Review of the ERP research eld 515

Review of the ERP research eld 517

Review of the ERP research eld 519

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