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ERP systems and the coordination of the enterprise

ric Alse ` ne E
partement de Mathe matiques et de Ge nie industriel, De cole Polytechnique de Montre al, Que bec, Canada E
Abstract
Purpose This paper is aimed at shedding some light on the issue of the contribution of ERP systems to the coordination of the activities of the enterprise, an issue which has not been empirically studied very much to date. Design/methodology/approach Exploratory research has been conducted in a Canadian mail and parcel delivery enterprise on this theme of the contribution of ERP systems to the coordination of activities. The system studied was the R/3 system developed by the rm SAP. Some 16 different work situations, in and between four basic units of the company, were investigated in an ethnographic way. Findings Various contributions (real or potential) to the coordination of activities were detected for the R/3 system studied. The contribution of R/3 was not, however, systematic. In addition, this contribution was diverse in nature and quite variable in intensity. Research limitations/implications The results of this research, which was to be exploratory, are not denitive. Other research will be necessary, notably to specify the range of the possible types of contribution in regard to the various work situations that may exist in enterprises. Practical implications This research conrms the idea that ERP systems can contribute to the coordination of activities in the enterprise. The devices and mechanisms of an organizational nature are denitively not the only means that permit coordination in the enterprise. Originality/value This paper will make it possible for managers and researchers to better understand the role that ERP systems can play in the coordination and integration of the enterprise. Keywords Manufacturing resource planning, Business enterprises, Parcel delivery services, Canada Paper type Research paper

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Introduction Enterprises are evolving, as we know, in an increasingly competitive environment. To survive and possibly prosper in the new economic order, they owe it to themselves, in particular, to improve the way in which they each coordinate their activities. For some years now, a line of thinking has developed the idea that the coordination and integration of the enterprise can be achieved by means of a technological type ` ne, 1999). This (Merchant, 1961; Harrington, 1973; Petrie, 1992; Copplestone, 1994; Alse perspective seems even to have acquired a great deal of weight recently, with the arrival on the market of ERP systems and their widespread implementation, rst in large and then in medium-sized and small enterprises. For many authors, ERPs are systems which enable integration of the various functions of the enterprise, to the extent that they centralize and make accessible all the information required for the various business processes that run across these functions (Hernandez, 1997;
bastien Carton for his work on data collection and Franc The author wishes to thank Se ois Pichault for his comments. This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Business Process Management Journal Vol. 13 No. 3, 2007 pp. 417-432 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 1463-7154 DOI 10.1108/14637150710752326

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Davenport, 1998; Langenwalter, 2000; Kumar and van Hillegersberg, 2000; Brady et al., 2001; Beretta, 2002; Shehab et al., 2004). Curiously, the empirical evidence of the contribution of ERPs to the coordination and integration of the activities of the enterprise has not really been provided yet. Most of the studies on these systems are related to their implementation in enterprises. A few begin to deal with their organizational impacts (Davenport, 1998; Mabert et al., 2000; Sia et al., 2002; Granlund and Malmi, 2002; Olhager and Selldin, 2003; Lemaire, 2003; Spathis and Constantinides, 2004), but the question of their contribution to coordination and integration is not generally addressed in a very thorough way. For example, Mabert et al. (2000) and Olhager and Selldin (2003) merely note from their survey data collected in the USA and in Sweden that the areas that have beneted the most from the implementation of ERPs are the availability of information and the integration of the operations and processes of the enterprise. For his part, Davenport (1998) mentions in a somewhat anecdotal manner that, at Elf Atochem, the implementation of the SAP R/3 system has made it possible to combine various departments of the company into a single one (accounts receivable and credit on the one hand, and customer service on the other), as well as to create a new type of position, that of demand manager, at the intersection between the sales and production planning functions. Finally, Lemaire (2003) mentions, fairly briey, on the basis of the case studies she has carried out in seven enterprises in Belgium, that ERP systems induce a decompartmentalization of organizational units (to the extent that the departments are led either towards greater cooperation among themselves or to regroup, as they are now linked by the sequence of tasks prescribed by the application software), as well as an increased involvement of middle managers in the coordination of the various functions of the enterprise (as a result of the improvement in their access to information). This paper is aimed at shedding complementary light on this domain. In it are reported and discussed the results of an exploratory research study which we have recently carried out in an enterprise around an ERP system in this case, the R/3 system developed by the German company SAP on the theme of the contribution of this system to the coordination of activities. First, the conceptual framework of the research is explained. Then, the case studied and the methodology followed are described, after which the results of the research are presented. The paper ends with a discussion of these results. Conceptual framework Integration and coordination The concepts of integration and coordination are very close. Many authors make no distinction between them, even mistaking them for one another. Galbraith (1973), for example, does not discriminate between coordination devices and integration devices (or mechanisms). For their part, Van de Ven et al. (1976, p. 322) dene coordination as follows: Coordination means integrating or linking together different parts of an organization to accomplish a collective set of tasks. For us, integration is rst and foremost a state that of an organization the different parts (administrative units, individual members) of which form a coherent raly, 1988; Copplestone, 1994; and harmonious whole (Lawrence and Lorsch, 1967; E Ghoshal and Gratton, 2002). Coordination, by contrast, is a process aimed at distributing resources and tasks, orchestrating activities and harmonizing

actions (Fayol, 1916). Coordination can thus be seen as a means to arrive at the integration of the enterprise, or at least of a certain number of its constituent parts raly, 1988; Clemmons and Simon, 2001). It should be noted, however, that this is not (E the only one. Indeed, integration can be achieved in all sorts of ways: by physically bringing individuals and administrative units closer together; by making them collaborate, work and make decisions together (work teams, task forces, etc.); by managing, or making them manage, their conicts; by establishing joint compensation systems; by merging positions or administrative units; etc. (Lawrence and Lorsch, 1967; Everaere, 1994; Ghoshal and Gratton, 2002). Coordination and work situations Traditionally, authors have talked about coordination either in terms of coordination of work (Mintzberg, 1979, 1989) or in terms of interdepartmental and/or intradepartmental coordination (Fayol, 1916; Gulick, 1937; March and Simon, 1958; Thompson, 1967; Galbraith, 1973; Van de Ven et al., 1976). These approaches to coordination appear to be either rather vague or much too broad. In effect, between two departments, but also within a single department, there may exist a great many different work situations (the relay work of certain employees, the parallel work of others, etc.), each of them calling for one or more particular coordination solutions. Moreover, a coordination solution which functions well in one case may be totally inadequate and ineffective in another case. Thus, in a factory specializing in tube nishing, the issuing of a work order by a planner may make it possible to arrange the relay work of various operators (benders, welders, etc.), but be of no use in the allocation of work between the benders on the one hand and between the welders on the other. This is why we, for our part, opt for the work situation as a eld of reference for studying coordination, this situation being understood as a particular mode of involvement of one or more employees belonging to the same unit or to a number of units in some type of productive activity (production of goods or services, for use inside or outside the organization). Technology-organization relationship A debate has been going on for many years as to the nature of the ran, 1991). technology-organization relationship within enterprises (Maurice, 1980; He Certain authors are advocates of technological determinism (Woodward, 1965). For them, technology shapes the organization; there is fundamentally a technological imperative which weighs on the organization. Other authors think that technology inuences the organization in a contingent way. For example, for Hickson et al. (1969), the size of the enterprise mediates the inuence of technology on the organizational structure. Moreover, not long ago, certain authors began to support the idea that technology, as well as the organization, is a social construction, and that technology is at most an occasion for new organizational structuring practices (Barley, 1986; Orlikowski, 1992; DeSanctis and Poole, 1994). We are, for our part, of the view that technology conveys an organizational logic, stemming from the choices made by the designers of the technology, and that it is this ` ne, 1990; Freyssenet, 1992; logic that weighs on the organization (Noble, 1979; Alse McLoughlin, 1993; De Terssac and Soubie, 1995). Sometimes the constraints conveyed

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by the technology are very strong, or they are in accordance with the stake the actors have within the enterprise, so that the actors either adapt to it or comply with it. Sometimes, by contrast, they decide to ignore the constraints that the technology brings with it. In this case, they develop their own mode of functioning around it. Nevertheless, their initiatives remain in general limited, or colored, by the constraints at work. In parallel, technology may also offer opportunities in terms of organization, that the actors either seize or not. When they do, they might arrive at instituting a new division of labor, a new mode of functioning, or even a new organizational structure (for example, a supervisor may decide to enlarge the specialized and fragmented work of her subordinates, when she becomes aware either that the technology is freeing up work time, or that it enables them to realize certain operations which had previously been impossible). Certain of these constraints and opportunities sometimes affect the coordination of work situations. By contribution of a technology to the coordination of the enterprise, we mean the concrete effects of these constraints and the specic consequences of these opportunities in terms of the harmonization of actions, the orchestration of activities and the distribution of resources and tasks, at the level of the various work situations that exist within the enterprise. Case studied and methodology The enterprise studied was a Canadian one delivering mail and parcels, with some 55,000 full-time and part-time employees throughout Canada. Its turnover was in the order of $5 billion Canadian (in 2002). This enterprise was selected for the research because not long ago it implemented some modules of the SAP R/3 system. During an initial implementation phase, from July to September 2001, the sales and distribution and customer relationship management modules of the system were installed. Then, during the winter of 2002, the materials management, nancial accounting and controlling modules were implemented, as well as a number of applications of the human resources (HR) module[1]. It should be added that the workow (WF) cross-application module of the R/3 system had been used since the start by the enterprise, but that, at the time of the study (October 2002-May 2003), it had little affect on the applications of the HR module, as it was used only for personnel evaluation approvals and for travel expense refund requests. Four basic units were studied in particular in this enterprise. These four units all belonged to the same regional operations division (the Region A operations division). They were selected on the one hand for logistical reasons (they were all located in a regional center which was easily accessible to the research team[2]), and on the other because they were the units of this center that used the R/3 HR module the most (the HR module being itself the one most often used at the center in question). These four units are presented in Table I. An initial inquiry, consisting of an examination of the pertinent internal documentation and of conducting numerous informal interviews among the majority of the employees of the units studied on their respective work and on their possible interactions with colleagues, has enabled us to identify no fewer than fty different work situations between, and within, the four units in question. Then, 16 of these work situations were selected, on the basis of their diversity and their potentiality with

Work unit IMVU

Mission

Staff and structure About 150 people including ten managerial staff members (eight supervisors, one superintendent and one manager) working on different shifts and belonging to four different teams (verication, deposit declaration capture, manifest capture, national billing)

Head department Plant 1

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Verication of the mail which arrives in batches at Plant 1 (a mail-processing plant, which was part of the center under study as well) Verication and capture into R/3 of various documents, in order that the mail processed at Plant 1 and other types of mail be billed by another unit of the company (located at the head ofce) PIC Entry of data and production of reports on the mail processed at Plant 1 Detection of data entry errors in the HR module of the R/3 system and ensuring that the necessary corrections are made EM Handling of personnel transfers department within region A within Plant 1, between the companys postal stations, and, nally, between Plant 1 and the companys postal stations ER Seeing to the application of the law department and of the companys policies and its collective agreements within the Region A Operations division Ensuring, at this same level, workforce planning, the lling of positions by promotion and by recruitment, and employee compensation and benets determination

421

23 people, divided into three teams Operations (reports, analysis, sampling), two of support these teams working on different shifts

14 people, all working during the day, and divided into two teams (Plant 1, Stations)

HR

HR 24 people, all of them working during the day, on ve different teams (Legal Programs, Workforce Planning, Stafng, Compensation and Benets, Mail Room) Table I. Mission, staff, structure and head department of the units studied

respect to the research problem (Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Yin, 1994), for a complementary investigation Table II. This complementary investigation consisted of observing various work practices linked to R/3 (data entry, navigation within the system, etc.) and of conducting numerous additional interviews, again informal, among the employees concerned on the contribution of the system to the harmonization of actions, the orchestration of activities and the distribution of resources and tasks at the level of each of the work situations selected. Various contributions of the R/3 system to the coordination of activities were detected in this way. A detailed descriptive report of these contributions was then written and submitted to certain executives in the enterprise for correction, additions and validation. The contributions detected Regarding the parallel work of the Incoming Mail Verication Unit (IMVU) supervisors (situation 1), it turned out that the R/3 system generated a certain framing of that work.

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Work situations (no.) Parallel work of supervising the unit teams, of the supervisors (1) Relay work of the supervisors, the superintendent and the manager, for evaluating personnel and approving evaluations (2) Aid of a Manifest Capture team supervisor by a National Billing team supervisor, in the case of low workload of the Manifest Capture team (3) Parallel work of data entry and report production, as well as record verication, of the Reports clerks (4) Relay work between Reports clerks and Reports analysts or supervisor analysts, for the analysis and validation of reports, and for the analysis of error notications (5) Parallel work of transfers within Plant 1, or from Region A postal stations to Plant 1, of the Plant 1 clerks (6) Relay work between Plant 1 and Stations teams, for transfers from Region A postal stations to Plant 1, and conversely (7) Parallel work of lling positions, by promotion or recruitment, of the Stafng agents (8) Assistance to Stafng agents by Stafng clerks, for certain position lling processes (9) Relay work between the Workforce Planning, Stafng and Compensation and Benets teams, for lling positions not lled by transfers (10) Provision of service by the PIC to the IMVU (work-time reports, error reports, search for solutions to HR administration problems) (11) Provision of service by the EM department to the IMVU (lling of positions, elimination of positions, transfer of an employee, procurement of temporary employees) (12) Provision of service by the ER department to the IMVU (lling of positions, modication of the organization chart of the unit, consultation of an employees personnel record) (13) Provision of service by the PIC to the EM department (work-time reports for temporary employees) (14) Relay work between the PIC and the EM and ER departments, for correction of errors or missed data entries in the R/3 system (15) Relay work between the EM and ER departments, for the recruitment of temporary employees or for the updating of the salary and benets of a transferred employee (16)

Units involved IMVU

422

PIC

EM

ER

IMVU and PIC IMVU and EM IMVU and ER PIC and EM PIC and EM/ER EM and ER

Table II. List of work situations studied in depth

Daily, the supervisors had to enter the reasons for the absences of employees under their supervision, and to input their approval of overtime and special leave. If they failed to perform a data entry task, then this fact would be agged to them, on the following day, in an error report produced by them when they activated the R/3 PTRL00 function or sent to them by a Performance Information Center (PIC) Reports clerk (who had used the same PTRL00 function). In addition, if they made an input error (notably, concerning leave authorization with respect to the terms of collective agreements), the system informed them of it by refusing the input in question. R/3 also systematically issued an alarm three days before the end of xed-term contracts, in order that they would remind the temporary employees concerned that their mandate was ending. Moreover, at the time of the study, the four supervisors of the Manifest Capture and National Billing teams had the same type of employee evaluation form to

ll in, in R/3. Previously, the form that they completed manually could differ from one team to another. Thus, some degree of uniformity had been introduced into their work. As to the relay work performed between the supervisors, the superintendent and the manager of the IMVU (situation 2), the R/3 system contributed to some uidization of the work process, via its WF module. This module automatically and immediately transferred to the superintendent the assessments produced and entered into the RH module by the supervisors, as well as to the manager the assessments and approvals carried out and entered into this same RH module by the superintendent. The superintendent and the manager received notication of the arrival of these assessments and approvals on a special R/3 screen. They had only to click on these notications to access the assessments and approvals in question. Concerning the parallel work of the PIC Reports clerks (situation 4), the R/3 system played, on the one hand, no role in the coordination of that part of their work that was associated with the production of reports on the mail processed at Plant 1, given that this work was done with the help of another system (dedicated to this process); on the other hand, it framed the remainder of the work of the clerks who then all had to use it. At that time, they were required to work with very precise screens (for example, to capture the employees planned vacation times and their weekly leave rotations). Moreover, if they performed a data entry which contravened a collective agreement, then R/3 would disallow the data entry in question (for example, concerning the annual number or periodic number of days of vacation employees could take). With regard to the relay work between PIC Reports clerks and PIC Reports analysts or supervisor analysts (situation 5), the contribution of R/3 to the coordination of activities was fairly small, but there was one nonetheless. When the clerks notied the analysts of errors they found in employee records, they specied the SAP identication number of the employees concerned in the e-mail they sent, so that the analysts would in turn be able to perform their work more easily and more correctly. The parallel work of the Plant 1 clerks of the Employee Movement (EM) department (situation 6) was, for its part, clearly dictated by the R/3 system. The clerks had rst to perform transactions at various stages in the transfer process (opening of the competition, classication of candidates, transfer of the employee selected). These transactions also consisted in completing, on each occasion, a whole series of data entries, and this was generally done in a number of sub-steps and on a number of screens (up to seven screens for the three sub-steps making up the transfer stage, for example). If a clerk skipped a sub-step, the system would not stop him, but it could then generate errors, the consequences of which being sufciently serious to prevent him doing so (for example, the employee who had been moved would not be paid). Furthermore, the clerk could not, within a sub-step, move from one screen to another unless all the required entries had been made (if he tried to do so, the system displayed an error message). Neither could he make any aberrant data entry (for example, a transfer date prior to the current date). The system did not allow this to occur again, it would then display an error message. Concerning the relay work between the Plant 1 and Stations teams of the EM department (situation 7), the contribution of the R/3 system again turned mainly on the fact that the system provided numbers for the employees and numbers for the positions occupied and requested by the employees, and that these numbers were to be

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found, in whole or part, on the transfer requests and on the appointment letters which facilitated the work of each of the EM teams that took over from the other. Regarding the parallel work of the Stafng agents of the Employee Relations (ER) department (situation 8), the contribution of R/3 was, by contrast, quite considerable. At the time of the study, the Stafng agents all had to use certain tools which were in the system, such as the skills proles (the various skills required for the positions to be lled, and those currently possessed by the employees working in the company). Moreover, they had to carry out transactions at various stages of the stafng process (opening of the competition, planning of interviews, evaluation of candidates, classication of candidates, stafng of the position). During each of these stages, they had one or more sub-steps to follow and data entries to make on one or more screens (nine screens for the three sub-steps of the competition opening stage, for example). It was generally not possible for them, in addition, to move from one screen to another unless all the required entries had been made. As to the assistance to Stafng agents by Stafng clerks in the ER department (situation 9), it appeared that it was possible for the agents to search R/3 to see what transactions the clerks had performed with respect to the positions to be lled, and thereby to verify whether or not the stafng processes were running as desired. Consequently, the clerks could have felt that they had no choice but to respect the advice, instructions and objectives of agents each time the latter delegated to them stafng responsibilities. However, such was not the case, because the agents claimed that they did not avail themselves of the possibility offered by R/3, since they had total condence in the clerks who had extensive experience inside the company. With regard to the relay work between the workforce planning, stafng and compensation and benets teams of the ER department (situation 10), the R/3 system contributed to some uidization of the work process to the extent where: . The workforce planning agents emailed to Stafng agents certain information which they had previously entered into the system or which could be found in the system (the SAP identication number of each position to be lled, and the task description associated with each of these positions) in order to facilitate the work of the Stafng agents. . The Stafng agents transmitted to the supervisor analyst in charge of the compensation and benets team a copy of the letter appointing the selected candidates containing notably the SAP identication number of each position lled, again with a view to facilitating the work of their colleagues in the Compensation and Benets team. Apart from this, we noted that the workforce planning agents also had a tendency to verify, via R/3, how far along the Stafng agents were in their work to ll positions they had indeed to make every effort to have a position lled for which authorization to ll it had been obtained, and to have it lled without undue delay. However, this control did not seem to be sufcient to develop new attitudes among the Stafng agents: the workforce planning agents also asked them to report on the stafng they had handled on a spreadsheet saved on the departments shared hard disk. As regards the provision of service by the PIC to the IMVU (situation 11), the contribution of the R/3 system was again to be found in the supplying of identication numbers (for employees, work positions, etc.). The IMVU mentioned these numbers in

its emails reporting problems to the PIC, which made it possible for this latter to work more quickly and more effectively on the problems in question. It was much the same for the provision of service by the EM department to the IMVU (situation 12) and the provision of service by the ER department to the IMVU (situation 13). Here again, the SAP identication numbers of positions and employees were communicated from one unit to the other, which facilitated the work of the next unit in the process. It also turned out that, when there was a position to be lled, the Stafng agent concerned would have a discussion with the manager of the IMVU prior to the launch of a competition, based on the data contained in R/3 about that position, in order to better understand its nature and requirements. Concerning the relay work between the PIC and the EM and ER departments (situation 15), the R/3 system also constituted an intermediary, a common reference system, between the PIC and the EM and ER departments. Previously, if the PIC received complaints from Plant 1 employees and supervisors concerning the administration of HR, it could only retransmit them to the EM and ER departments, because it did not have access to the information systems used by these departments. With R/3 in place, the PIC could not only analyze the complaints in question, but also indicate the sources of the problems to the EM and ER departments and the way in which they could correct them. The relay work between the EM and ER departments (situation 16) was also, for its part, facilitated by the SAP identication numbers of positions and employees, which the EM clerks communicated to the employees of the ER department. Finally, as to the aid of a Manifest Capture team supervisor by a National Billing team supervisor within the IMVU (situation 3) and the provision of service by the PIC to the EM department (situation 14), it should be noted that we did not succeed in detecting any contribution, of any kind, of the R/3 system to coordination. Discussion The results we obtained in our study of the mail and parcel delivery enterprise tend to conrm the hypothesis according to which ERP systems can contribute to the coordination of activities in enterprises. In effect, a number of contributions were brought to light with respect to the R/3 system studied, and these were found to occur in various work situations. In two work situations, however, no R/3 contribution was found. This result tends, for its part, to indicate that the contribution of ERPs to coordination is not systematic[3]. There may exist work situations in which the constraints and potentialities of these systems have no effect or relevance and there are all kinds of reasons for this, among them the following: none of the actors in these situations is a user of these systems; the situations do not call for any coordination solution in particular (the actors taking the view that a certain disorganization with respect to these situations appears to be acceptable); or the classic organizational coordination devices and mechanisms (hierarchical referral, plans, procedures, etc.) are judged to be effective and sufcient. That said, it is interesting to note that the contribution of ERPs to coordination can be of a relatively diverse nature. In effect, some six types of contribution (actual or potential) of R/3 to the coordination of activities come out of the case studied (Table III) the rst two rather falling into the harmonization of actions, and the next four into the orchestration of activities:

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Contribution of R/3 to coordination Standardization of the work of each employee

Characteristics of R/3 in play Work situations involved (no.) Standard data entries and tools

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Table III. The various types of contribution (actual and potential) of R/3 to the coordination of activities in the case studied

Parallel work of the IMVU supervisors (1) Parallel work of the Stafng agents of the ER department (8) Parallel work of the IMVU supervisors (1) Framing of the work of Required inputs, each employee non-authorized inputs, values Parallel work of the PIC Reports clerks (4) Parallel work of the Plant 1 clerks of the by default, warnings, error EM department (6) reports Parallel work of the Stafng agents of the ER department (8) Regulation of the work Transparency of transactions Assistance to Stafng agents by Stafng of certain individuals clerks in the ER department (9) Relay work between the Workforce Planning, Stafng and Compensation & Benets teams of the ER department (10) Relay work between PIC Reports clerks and Fluidization of the work Provision of reference data PIC Reports analysts or supervisor analysts process (facilitation of (5) downstream work) Relay work between the Plant 1 and Stations teams of the EM department (7) Relay work between the Workforce Planning, Stafng and Compensation & Benets teams of the ER department (10) Provision of service by the PIC to the IMVU (11) Provision of service by the EM department to the IMVU (12) Provision of service by the ER department to the IMVU (13) Relay work between the EM and ER departments (16) Provision of service by the ER department Fluidization of the work Accessible and shared data to the IMVU (13) process (improvement Relay work between the PIC and the EM of interfaces) and ER departments (15) Fluidization of the work Automatic transfer of outputs Relay work of the IMVU supervisors, superintendent and manager (2) process (automation of with the WF module interfaces)

(1) R/3 brings about a standardization of work among certain employees who work in parallel (including supervisors). With R/3, these employees carry out the same type of transactions and work with the same tools, which they did not do before. (2) R/3 frames the work of the employees who work in parallel. Not only do all these employees now carry out certain operations in the same way, but they all also work in a very precise manner. They have to do certain data entries, on certain screens, in a certain order, and cannot input any kind of data. They must also perform certain actions at certain times. The system prompts them and

(3)

(4)

(5)

(6)

invites them to do this by refusing some screen skips and some data entries, by issuing warnings, through error reports, or by the generation of errors having non-negligible consequences (following the assignment of values by default, notably). R/3 can lead to a regulation of the work of employees in situations where they are assisting or working in relay. The system makes the transactions of certain employees transparent to their superiors or to their peers who are concerned by their work, which means that these superiors and peers are in a position to verify their work, and to do so at any time. This possibility can, in turn, lead these employees to work in conformity with the expectations that have been communicated to them. R/3 brings about some uidity in the provision of service and in the realization of relay work by facilitating the work performed downstream in the work process. It provides, among other things, identication numbers which the employees transmit to one another. These numbers make it possible for those to whom they are communicated to do their work effectively and diligently, as they give them the means to rapidly and unerringly access the les in the system on which they are to work. R/3 also generates greater uidity in the provision of service and in the performance of relay work by improving the interfaces between employees (service requests and le transmissions). With R/3, employees have access to certain common data, which enables these employees to have discussions based on them, and to direct the next steps of the work process effectively. R/3 also brings about greater uidity in relay work, by automating the interfaces between employees, with the result that they may no longer have to send one another elements of work, or to communicate in order to trigger subsequent operations. Thanks to the WF module of the system, they automatically receive the work completed at the previous stage, at which point it is their turn to perform their work.

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These six types of contribution may not, incidentally, appear to be very new. In effect, the framing of the work generated by ERPs is already a fairly well known phenomenon:
[ERPs] prescribe and automatically link together the tasks of many workers who, from that point on, cannot deviate from the procedure to be followed and defer an operation to a later time, even if an unforeseen event occurs or if they nd that another way of performing the task is more efcient (Lemaire, 2003, p. 132).

SAP controls and records the application of the procedure. The least omission and the smallest data entry error are penalized by the absence of a result (Le Loarne, 2003, p. 6). We also know that integrated systems have a tendency to induce some conformity in the behaviors of the employees at work, as a result of the panoptic control they permit (Zuboff, 1988; Sia et al., 2002). The uidization of the work process by improving the interfaces between employees is also suggested in the theoretical literature on ERPs: The software could integrate a companys entire business by using a common database that linked all operations, allowing real-time data sharing and streamlined operations (Brady et al., 2001, p. 36). Finally, the uidization of work

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processes by automating the interfaces between employees corresponds to an idea advanced by a number of authors. Hernandez (1997, pp. xix-xx), for example, writes:
The whole data ow of SAP R/3 works in an integrated way, which means that data needs to be entered just once, and the system automatically triggers or updates other logically related functions or data. For example, booking a sales order can trigger logically related functions in the production plan and shipping information systems, which, when appropriate, start the billing process and end up automatically updating the companys nancial statements.

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It remains, however, that rarely have these effects of ERPs been analyzed from the point of view of their signicance to the coordination of activities within the enterprise. Moreover, we have to stress that this signicance only comes to light to the extent that these effects are linked to concrete and particular work situations. Thus, the framing of the work becomes more than one effect of ERPs on the way of working once it is linked, for example, to situations of parallel work (like that of the Reports clerks, Stafng agents or IMVU supervisors in the enterprise under study). It then represents a contribution to the coordination of these situations, to the extent where it participates in the fact that all the deliverables provided by the various employees (or managers) concerned are fairly similar in terms of quality, independently of the employees (or managers) who produced them. In another vein, one can also note that the intensity of the contribution of ERPs to coordination may be highly variable. In the case studied, the framing of the work of each employee clearly constituted an important contribution in parallel work situations. New ways of working, which were quite constraining and sometimes burdensome, were introduced for all those who were performing the same type of work. The standardization of each employees work in these same situations might have been a notable phenomenon, but in practice it was not, due to the fact that the employees concerned had already been using various computer tools to do their work prior to the implementation of R/3. As to the regulation of the work of certain employees in assistance or in relay work situations, this was no more than a possibility, owing to the reactions of the employees at the time of the study. The uidizing of the work processes, both in the way it facilitates downstream work and in the way it improves interfaces, constituted, for its part, a rather minor contribution for the provision of service and for relay work. Finally, the uidization of work processes by the automation of relay work interfaces was quite marginal even if it was non-negligible. On the one hand, the use of the WF module of R/3 was limited to a single type of process (the process of personnel evaluation and evaluation approval), and on the other, its exploitation was very low, even for this process[4]. Finally, it must be remembered that the enterprise had not completed its implementation of the R/3 system. The HR module in particular was only partially installed. The table of the contributions detected is only, therefore, a provisional one. Some of these contributions could be broader in scope, when implementation is complete. Other contributions might even be added in the units studied[5]. Conclusion Our research was aimed at shedding some light on the issue of the contribution of ERP systems to the coordination of activities of the enterprise, an issue which has not yet been the subject of much empirical study. We found that ERP systems can, in fact, contribute to the coordination of the activities of the enterprise, but that this

contribution is not systematic. In addition, this contribution can be diverse in nature and quite variable in intensity. That said, it is clear that the results of our research, which was to be exploratory, are not denitive. Other research will be necessary, notably to specify the range of the possible types of contribution in regard to the various work situations that may exist in enterprises. Finally, it seems to us that our research opens up new avenues for research. In effect, if ERP systems in particular, and certain technologies in general, do contribute to the coordination of activities in the enterprise, then there is some necessity to construct a general theory of coordination in the enterprise, since coordination is traditionally almost exclusively seen as the fruit of devices and mechanisms of an organizational nature Fayol (1916), Gulick (1937), March and Simon (1958), Thompson (1967), Lawrence and Lorsch (1967), Galbraith (1973), Van de Ven et al. (1976) and Mintzberg (1979, 1989). In this perspective, one may note that Petrie (1992) tends to consider coordination technologies as substitutes for organizational modes of coordination. According to him, the more these technologies are developed and available, the more possible it would be to do without our hierarchical bureaucracies. We, for our part, are more of the opinion of Twigg et al. (1992), who see in technology a simple alternative but an original one to traditional organizational modes[6]. As, for example, an engineer produces and distributes a manual containing procedures to be followed, or a supervisor gives an order which indicates a way of proceeding, so some actors develop and implement technologies which convey certain constraints and certain opportunities in the matter of coordination. That said, it remains to be known among other things whether, in terms of coordination, all these technologies are equivalent, whether there exist subsets of technological and organizational means which are more appropriate than others with regard to certain work situations, and whether employees in enterprises have the same attitudes of acceptance (or rejection) with respect to these various means.
Notes 1. That is, the following applications: organizational management, applicant management, personnel development, seminar and convention management, personnel administration, time management, and travel expenses. Note too that the enterprise expected to install ve other applications of the HR module in January 2004, during a third implementation phase: benets, compensation, payroll, health and safety, and employee self-service. 2. This team was made up of the author of this paper and a student research assistant. 3. It is important to remember, moreover, that numerous situations, which are even less likely to constitute the crucible for an R/3 contribution, were removed from the study sample. 4. Thus, for example, the system in place did not indicate any deadline for the completion of each of the stages of the process of personnel evaluation and evaluation approval. A closing date for the process was communicated to the managers, but this was done by memorandum and not by R/3. And, at the IMVU level, it was only the possibility of receiving a team bonus at the end of the year that encouraged the managerial staff to collectively respect this closing date. 5. On this point, one could hypothesize that a greater exploitation of the WF module could lead to signicant gains. It is important to point out, however, that the enterprise did not plan, at the end of the study, to make more use of this module in HR management processes. Two principal reasons were given to explain this choice:

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(1) The organizational structure and certain processes of the enterprise are very complex, and the WF module was not designed to function in such a complex environment. For example, there are often three to four approval levels in the enterprise, and R/3 can accommodate a maximum of two. Another example is that R/3 was not designed to operate with an employee who reports directly to a director; some hierarchical levels are required between the two positions. (2) The WF module functions well if the data entries are made rapidly. Now, the entry of data for stafng a position, for example, may be spread out over a certain time period. So, if the WF module were used, the stafng process might not reach completion or some individuals might be approached in error by the system to complete the process. 6. For a long time, manufacturing rms have only had the choice between integration through establishing linkage mechanisms between functions, and integration through reducing differentiation by merging functions. However, over the last decade or so, a third option for integrating functions has begun to emerge with the development of database technologies (Twigg et al., 1992, p. 79).

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