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success factor for facilitating the system assimi-
lation process (Yu, 2005). The advantage of an
internal ERP team is their good knowledge of
the organization's processes, their proximity to
workers, which enables them to better evaluate
the problem and its consequences. With the high
turnover rate of ERP expertise and the skill short-
age, top management should set flexible human
resource policies on pay and contracts, and provide
opportunities for career development (Willcocks
& Sykes, 2000).
Our data analysis showed the critical value of
a formal post-implementation training program
(Nah & Delgado, 2006), especially if this activity
was overlooked during implementation. Further-
more, in order to cope with the high turnover rate
of ERP experts and with the constantly increasing
knowledge of the system (from external parties,
workers' experiences with the system, etc.), the
use of an ERP knowledge management system
was considered to be a highly effective tool to
encourage learning as well as knowledge shar-
ing and creation. Unlike previous researches,
our findings showed that maintaining a strategic
relationship with the system vendor was not es-
sential. Services such as updates and maintenance
could be obtained from other vendors. Consultant
effectiveness, however, remained an important
factor for assimilation.
Institutional forces vary across companies
depending on their industries and markets. The
strongest forces are government regulations and
the pressures from headquarters and external
partners to properly assimilate the system in
order to be able to provide integrated, detailed,
and real-time information. The economic moti-
vation remains, however, the main incentive for
properly assimilating the system, deploying its
functionalities to the maximum, and continuously
optimizing its value in order to fully benefit from
its advantages.
The second objective of this study was to
investigate the differences between the two
groups of companies. It is important to say from
the outset that if our findings, as we saw earlier,
showed several commonalities between the two
groups of companies, a number of constraints were
more conspicuous in the Tunisian Company C.
One of the main handicaps to assimilation in that
company was the persistent reluctance amongst
several managers to commit themselves to the
system and their strong objection to changing
their traditional working methods. No doubt by
being so, they caused, among other things, the
ongoing lack of integration (and aggregation)
of the organization's data and they limited the
constructive sharing of information between the
different units of their firms. The managers' lack
of commitment can be attributed to two main
factors. Firstly, for many managers, information
is not considered a corporate asset. It is rather, a
personal asset which should be shared selectively
with other employees in the firm. Additionally,
there is the rejection of the plant workers to spend
extra time entering data and their perception of the
system as merely adding extra load to their duties,
controlling their actions and even tracking their
mistakes. No doubt, this had badly impacted the
quality of the system's data and outputs (i.e. their
reliability, accuracy, completeness and precision)
which, in turn, had frustrated the managers and
discouraged them from using the system.
The lack of users' and managers' commitment
and the fear of the loss of power were also prob-
lematic in the Canadian company B. It was easier
and relatively faster for its IT/ERP unit to limit
these problems than in the Tunisian company C.
Indeed, the high power distance, in-group loyalty,
and competitiveness amongst Tunisian managers
discouraged many of them from accepting the IT
manager's leadership and dissuaded them from
following his/her instructions. Needless to say,
such a competitiveness between managers and the
resulting fear of appearing incompetent in terms
of mastering the system further hampered system
assimilation by discouraging inexperienced man-
agers and novice users from benefiting from the
experiences of other managers working in another
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