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Abstract
In the Information Systems (IS) discipline there has been a continued interest in understanding how IT or IS development, implementation and use draw from and impact on social and power relations and the distribution of power in various contexts. This thesis aims to understand the role that the implementation and use of an enterprise system such as ERP can play in the (re)configuration, (re)construction and exercise of power in organisational contexts.
To achieve the aim, the thesis i) draws from extensive literature related to IS (and specifically ERP) and power, ii) develops a Foucauldian theoretical foundation to study ERP and power in organisational contexts and iii) examines a case of an ERP implementation and use in a State Owned Enterprise (SOE) in China as part of an ongoing modernization program. The thesis answers the following empirical research questions:
1. How are various forms of exercise of power and control enacted through the ERP system implementation and use in business processes and practices?
2. How do these enactments reconfigure power relations and reconstitute the regime of truth?
3. What is the role of the ERP system in such a process of power (re)construction?
The case study demonstrates how the ERP implementation aimed at rationalizing business processes led to largely covert attempts at increasing surveillance, standardization, disciplining, and subjugation. These attempts are met with counteraction in various forms through a ‘care of the self’, including overt resistance, e.g. openly challenging and arguing, non-participation, and covert resistance, e.g. distancing, persistence, creating workarounds. The analysis reveals the outcomes of the ERP implementation do not only result from the perception of technological (mis)fit or the interpretation by powerful groups but more importantly spring from mutual constitution of the ERP system and the human actors leading to reconfiguration of power relations. This is explained by proposing a concept of power-technology nexus as an instance of the broader notion of power/knowledge discussed by Foucault. The emergence of power-technology nexus indicates that the more ERP enabled processes get enacted, the more ERP becomes integral to the circulation and exercise of power, and the more the ERP system becomes a material embodiment of the power/knowledge nexus, thus a transformative agent. These empirical and theoretical results contribute not only to better understanding of the mutual reconstruction of power and technology, but also provide a theoretical foundation for a more critical view of the wider societal and political consequences of technology that can help inform both research and practice.