A Grounded Theory Study of Enterprise Systems Implementation: Lessons Learned from the Irish Health Services

Abstract

Enterprise systems (ES) promise to integrate all information flowing across the organisation. They claim to lay redundant many of the integration challenges associated with legacy systems, bring greater competitive advantages to the firm, and assist organisations to compete globally. However, despite such promises these systems are experiencing significant implementation challenges. The ES literature, particularly studies on critical success factors, point to top management support as a fundamental prerequisite for ensuring implementation success. Yet, the literature remains rather opaque, lacking an empirical understanding of how top management support ES implementation. As a result, this study seeks to explore this research question. With a lack of empirical knowledge about the topic, a grounded theory methodology was adopted. Such a methodology allows the investigator to explore the topic by grounding the inquiry in raw data. The Irish health system was taken as the organisational context, with their ES initiative one of the largest implementations in Western Europe.