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mitment to the system. Moreover, brainstorming
sessions and meetings to discuss changes and
exchange experiences were common rituals in
the company, including its plants.
One other major missing element, according to
most respondents, is a formal post-implementation
training program. Companies B and C were in
fact suffering from varying levels of redundancy
and parallel systems, which significantly lowered
their system assimilation efficiency. This redun-
dancy was essentially attributed to the lack of
training and proper communication during both
the implementation and the post-implementation
stage. Newcomers, in the case of all the studied
companies, were informally trained on the job by
their colleagues, learning only the very basic ac-
tions needed to do their work. Some respondents
highlighted the negative impact of such informal
training on the level of understanding and assimi-
lation of the system; this explains the heavy and
recurrent need of new system users for IT support,
especially when faced with unexpected problems.
Absorptive capacity
Being a complex technology, ERP imposes a
heavy learning burden on novel users in terms
of understanding the system, and learning how
to use it (Ke & Wei, 2006). Cohen and Levinthal
(1990) define the absorptive capacity as the firm's
ability to appreciate an innovation, to assimilate
and to apply it to new ends. They stress that the
firm's absorptive capacity is, in fact, largely a re-
sult of the firm's pre-existing knowledge in areas
related to the focal innovation. Hence, the more
a firm possesses prior ERP related knowledge,
the less arduous the assimilation process is (Ke
& Wei, 2006).
Among the four companies, only Company
D had previous experience with an ERP system,
which explains its smooth transition towards
developing a high-level ERP system and a high
level of assimilation of the system. In addition
to their high-quality help desk, the fact that the
system permitted interaction with a bigger popula-
tion of users (pan African) allowed Company D's
users to benefit from a wide pool of rich system
knowledge. Due to their accumulated learning
and long experience with the system, most of
Company A's modules were deployed nearly to
their maximum potential. Consultants were the
major source of knowledge for the four companies
when new modules were to be implemented or
assistance was needed concerning the interaction
between modules.
The issue of the absence of a knowledge
management system that captures and stores the
acquired knowledge and experience was high-
lighted by several interviewees when discussing
ERP knowledge resources.
reward system
It has been argued in previous studies that reward
strategies, such as rewarding the acquisition of
new skills and linking compensation to company
profits, promote learning and the institutionaliza-
tion of favorable behaviors (Jerez-Gómez et al.,
2005).In a study evaluating the importance of
critical success factors across ERP project phases,
Nah and Delgado (2006) found that ERP team
skills and compensation were the most important
factors for the post-implementation stage.
None of the studied firms, however, changed
their reward system to encourage and reward
ERP system use or to retain ERP experts and
trained superusers. Companies B and C suffered
from a general high turnover rate. According to
one respondent “
people find big opportunities
somewhere else... ERP opens doors. We're talking
about significant increases of advantages for the
employee who leaves to work with a consulting
company versus being an employee in the com-
pany
.” On the other hand, Companies A and D
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