Toward a Greater Understanding of End-Users' Acceptance of ERP Systems

Abstract

Despite huge investments made by organizations in ERP implementation, maintenance, and user training, ERP implementation failures and less than expected productivity improvements are not uncommon. End users’ reluctance to use newly implemented ERP systems is often cited as one of the main reasons for ERP failures. To understand the lack of end-user acceptance of ERP systems, we examined end users’ attitude toward system use and symbolic adoption; the latter refers to users’ voluntary mental acceptance of a system. Four instrumental beliefs—perceived usefulness,perceived ease of use, perceived compatibility, and perceived fit—were modeled as the antecedents. The research model was tested using a survey on end users’ perceptions in adopting and using a newly implemented ERP system. The findings show that perceived compatibility and perceived ease of use have both direct and indirect effects (mediated by attitude) on symbolic adoption, while perceived fit and perceived usefulness influence symbolic adoption via attitude. The study provides managerial implications for organizations in engendering positive user acceptance of enterprise systems and applications.