Enterprise Job Roles and Resistance to ERP Use: Actual Usage as an Antecedent to ERP Resistance

Resistance to system usage continues to be a research area needed to improve the ROI of organizational investments in information technology. Prior research on technology adoption has called for more sophisticated conceptualizations of systems usage that focus on specific research contexts. This team-based experiment used a realistic business simulation to investigate use of an integrated ERP system, focusing on IS Resistance as a barrier to use. The understanding of IS Resistance is further enhanced by the inclusion of a new factor, Task Interdependency on the ERP system and by analyzing individual’s specific roles and transactions within the ERP-supported process. The roles supporting integrated business processes consisted of two upstream roles (Inventory Specialist, Purchasing Agent) and two downstream roles (Marketing Coordinator, Sales Manager). Findings show task interdependency on ERP and ERP job role assignments are significant predictors of IS resistance, over and above effects of prior IS resistance and UTAUT attitude