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A comprehensive literature review of

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Article in Journal of Enterprise Information Management · July 2010

DOI: 10.1108/17410391011061780 · Source: DBLP

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JEIM
23,4
486
Received July 2009
Revised November 2009
Revised January 2010
Accepted February 2010
Journal of Enterprise Information
Management
Vol. 23 No. 4, 2010
pp. 486-520
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1741-0398
DOI 10.1108/17410391011061780
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/1741-0398.htm
A comprehensive literature
review of the ERP research field
over a decade
Bjarne Rerup Schlichter
Aarhus School of Business, University of Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark, and
Pernille Kraemmergaard
Centre for IS Management, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is first, to develop a methodological framework for conducting a
comprehensive literature review on an empirical phenomenon based on a vast amount of papers
published. Second, to use this framework to gain an understanding of the current state of the
enterprise resource planning (ERP) research field, and third, based on the literature review, to develop
a conceptual framework identifying areas of concern with regard to ERP systems.
Design/methodology/approach – Abstracts from 885 peer-reviewed journal publications from
2000 to 2009 have been analysed according to journal, authors and year of publication, and further
categorised into research discipline, research topic and methods used, using the structured
methodological framework.
Findings – The body of academic knowledge about ERP systems has reached a certain maturity and
several different research disciplines have contributed to the field from different points of view using
different methods, showing that the ERP research field is very much an interdisciplinary field. It
demonstrates that the number of ERP publications has decreased, and it indicates that the academic
interest in ERP is driven by an interest in an empirical phenomenon rather than that ERP is a new
research discipline. Different research topics of interest are identified and used in developing a
conceptual framework for “areas of concern” regarding ERP systems. Finally the usefulness of the
framework is confirmed by analysing one specific aspect of ERP research; business process
reengineering (BPR) to establish which theories different authors and journals have used in their
efforts to explore BPR and ERP.
Research limitations/implications – The findings of the literature study, the structured
methodological framework for comprehensive literature review and the conceptual framework
identifying different areas of concern are believed to be useful for other researchers in their effort to
obtain an overview of the evolution of the ERP research field and in positioning their own ERP
research.
Practical implications – The paper provides guidance for researchers with insight into what has
been published, where to publish ERP-related research and how to study it, and in positioning their
own interest in ERP systems in the interdisciplinary research field. Access to the EndNote database
containing bibliographical data of more than 880 papers can be used in future research and literature
analysis. For managers, the conceptual framework can be useful in increasing their understanding of
the complexity and areas of concern with regard to the ERP system.
Originality/value – The paper presents a structured methodological framework for analysing a vast
amount of academic publications with an interest in an empirical phenomenon, demonstration of how
academic interdisciplinary interest in ERP has evolved over time and reached a certain amount of
maturity and a conceptual framework of areas of concern with regard to ERP systems.
Keywords Manufacturing resource planning, Literature, Research
Paper type Literature review
1. Introduction Review of the
An enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is a business management system that ERP research
comprises integrated sets of comprehensive software, which can be used to manage
and integrate all the business functions within an organisation with a rationalised data field
architecture characterised by core process integration and shared product and/or
customer databases (Ross et al., 2006). Among the most important attributes of ERP
are its abilities to automate and integrate business processes, enable the 487
implementation of best business practices, share common data and practices across
the entire enterprise and produce and access information in real time (Soh et al., 2000;
Nah and Lau, 2001), and often the implementation of ERP has been linked to business
process re-engineering (BPR) (Koch, 2001a; Subramoniam et al., 2009). During the
1990s ERP systems became the de-facto standard for the replacement of legacy
systems in large companies, particularly multinationals (Shanks, 2000).
During the past decade ERP has attracted attention from both academic and
industrial communities (Shehab et al., 2004) and we feel that now is an opportune time
to ask how the ERP field has evolved and what its present state is (Chen and
Hirschheim, 2004). However, several scholars have already argued that research on
ERP has reached some maturity (Botta-Genoulaz et al., 2005; Møller, 2005) and others
have argued that the studies in ERP systems constitute a separate research domain
(Møller, 2005). None of these researchers seem to have statistical documentation for
their statements, and we would like to investigate whether they are right. This will be
accomplished through a comprehensive literature study of more than 885
peer-reviewed journal publications published from 2000 to 2009. We have chosen to
analyse papers published in various disciplines and journals, and have not limited
ourselves to papers published “only” on, e.g. information systems, accounting and
operation management. The aim is to assist scholars with an insight not just into their
own scientific field but also into complementary fields for views on the research related
to ERP systems (Botta-Genoulaz et al., 2005).
An extensive number of papers have included literature studies focusing on specific
aspects of ERP, e.g. business process re-engineering (BPR) (Subramoniam et al., 2009),
critical success factors for the implementation of ERP (Al-Mashari, 2001; Nah and Lau,
2001; Al-Mashari et al., 2003), systems justification (McGaughey and Angappa, 2007),
risk management (Aloini et al., 2007) and management accounting (Rom and Rohde,
2006), where papers are analysed according to established frameworks. However, only a
limited number of literature reviews have been carried out on the ERP research field
(Esteves and Pastor, 2001; Møller et al., 2004; Shehab et al., 2004; Botta-Genoulaz et al.,
2005). These reviews have either focused on papers published in certain disciplines
(Esteves and Pastor, 2001; Cumbie et al., 2005; Esteves and Bohorquez, 2007), only
included papers within limited and/or out-dated time frames (Botta-Genoulaz et al., 2005)
or not made their method for collecting papers to be included in the review explicit to the
reader (Shehab et al., 2004). Even though these reviews bring about some insight into the
ERP field, none of the reviews focused on the entire ERP field until 2009.
The purpose of this paper is threefold. The first objective is to develop a
methodological framework for conducting a comprehensive literature study on an
empirical phenomenon based on a vast amount of papers published over a long time
span across disciplines. The second objective is to use this framework to gain an
understanding of the current state of the ERP field across established disciplines
JEIM (Hirschheim and Klein, 2003). The third objective is, based on the literature review, to
23,4 develop a conceptual framework identifying areas of concern in regard to ERP
systems.
The paper is organised as follows. In section 2 we present existing literature studies
on ERP systems to position our own literature study, clarifying which questions we
would like to address. In section 3 the methodology framework for carrying out the
488 literature study is presented. In the section 4 the findings of the review are presented;
the findings are discussed and the conceptual framework presented in section 5; and
finally suggestions for further analysis of the papers included in the review are
outlined and the implications for research and praxis presented in the concluding
section 6 of the paper.

2. Previous literature studies on ERP

In this section the existing literature review studies until 2009 will be presented. The
purpose of this section is to position our literature review with regard to existing
knowledge about the ERP field, and to formulate specific research questions to be
asked and issues to be discussed on the basis of our findings. After an individual
presentation of the five ERP literature review publications that we have been able to
find, we will discuss the methods used and the shortcomings of the publications with
regard to the ability of the papers to give an overview of the ERP field (see Table I).
The first review we have been able to find was published in August 2001 (Esteves
and Pastor, 2001). This paper presents an annotated bibliography of ERP publications
published in ten main IS journals and eight IS conferences during the period 1997-2000.
A total of 189 publications are included in the study, of which only a minor portion is
journal publications – 21 in total: two were published in 1998, three in 1999 and 16 in
2000. The publications identified in this paper originate from a small number of
sources and were at that time quite recent. The publications analysed show that ERP
researchers mainly concentrated on issues related to the implementation phase of the
ERP life cycle. Until then the other phases had been almost forgotten. The authors
conclude their paper by stating that ERP systems offer many potential areas for
research and, due to their pervasive nature, ERP systems are of interest to a wide range
of scholarly disciplines (from software engineering to accounting), in addition to the IS
field. They also suggest that ERP research could or should be interdisciplinary and
that the number of publications would grow exponentially in 2001 and 2002.
In their review of 76 ERP publications, Shehab et al. (2004) classify the literature
according to selection and implementation, and major extracts of each paper are

Year Author Papers Span Frame

1 2001 Esteves and Pastor (2001) 189 1997-2000 Annotated bibliography

2 2004 Shehab et al. (2004) 76 1990-2003 Selection/implementation
3 2005 Botta-Genoulaz et al. (2005) 80 2003-2004 Identifies six areas of research
4 2005 Cumbie et al. (2005) 49 1999-2004 Implementation/operation/benefit
Table I. 5 2007 Esteves and Bohorquez (2007) 640 1001-2005 Life cycle
Earlier literature reviews 2010 The present review 885 2000-2009 Topic/discipline/method
addressed and analysed. The aim of the paper is to identify fruitful opportunities for Review of the
further research within ERP, and the authors state that they hope that their paper can ERP research
reinforce the ongoing research on ERP and provide a broad view of the current status
in ERP research. Included in the review are 76 publications – five books, eight field
conference papers and 63 journal publications published from 1990 to 2003. Taking a
closer look at the references, we find that only nine of these papers were published
before 2000; the remaining papers were published in the period from 2000 to 2003. The 489
authors conclude their paper by identifying shortcomings in the literature on issues of
interest to the authors. Shehab et al. (2004) do not present the method for selection of
the publications included in the review, which leads us to question whether the paper
actually does provide an overview of the literature in general, or just an overview of
publications and disciplines randomly selected by the authors themselves.
Additionally, we question the validity of the identified shortcomings, since no
information is provided as to why these particular shortcomings are mentioned and not
others.
Botta-Genoulaz et al. (2005) published a survey on research literature on ERP
systems from 2003 and 2004 in which they analyse 80 academic contributions from
various disciplines in order to identify the trends of the research literature.
Botta-Genoulaz et al. (2005) use web search facilities to identify publications to be
included. In their paper the method used for selecting the publications is presented. In
their first selection round of publications they find 250 publications; this number is
reduced to 80 publications to be included in the analysis. However, no method for
excluding the 170 publications is presented in the paper. In order to structure their
analysis of the 80 publications, they selected six different areas for classification of the
publications: implementation, optimisation, management through ERP, the ERP tools,
ERP and supply-chain management software and case studies, which they state have
constituted a rather consistent framework for classifying the publications. From their
analysis they draw several conclusions, one being that ERP research is published in a
variety of journals; another that ERP captures the attention of several research
disciplines. At the same time they find very few multi-disciplinary studies. Even
though this study provides the reader with an overview of the ERP field in 2003 and
2004, we will question whether the study does give an overview of the ERP field.
Another point of criticism is that the reader is not provided with an insight into how
the numbers are reduced from 250 to 80.
Cumbie et al. (2005) analyse 49 ERP publications published between 1999 and 2004
in eight top information systems (IS) journals and seven top operations management
(OM) journals with the aim of identifying gaps and motivating other researchers to
close such gaps. They analyse 49 ERP publications published in the journals chosen
according to both content and methods, using well-documented methods in three
phases: selection, classification and analysis and synthesis. They find an increasing
level of activity during the five-year period, with a slightly biased distribution of ERP
publications in IS journals compared with OM journals, and also that several research
methods are either underrepresented or absent. During their analysis of the
publications, three general areas emerge: implementation, operation and benefits. Of
the publications, 28 focused on implementation, 14 on operation and seven on benefits.
The review presents a well-structured method for collecting and analysing the
publications, but only publications published in top journals, 15 in total, from two
JEIM research disciplines are included, and the review does not provide an overview of the
23,4 ERP research field.
Esteves and Bohorquez (2007) categorise 640 publications mainly published in 23 IS
journals and ten IS conferences from 2001 to 2005 through an ERP life-cycle-based
framework. The goal of their study is to provide an updated annotated bibliography of
ERP publications categorising the publications through an ERP life-cycle framework
490 structured in phases. Of the publications, 25 are categorised as focusing on adoption,
15 on acquisition, 207 on implementation, 68 on usage, 59 on evolution, zero on
retirement, 35 on education and finally 40 publications were categorised as general:
papers not related to the ERP life cycle. Esteves and Bohorquez (2007) state that ERP
systems offer potential areas for research and, due to their pervasive nature, ERP
systems are of interest to a wide range of professional and scholarly disciplines (from
software engineering to accounting), and not only the field of IS. They further suggest
that ERP-related research could and should be interdisciplinary. They classify the
papers according to topic, not according to methods, and only look at the IS discipline,
providing the reader with only a limited overview of the field.
None of the existing literature reviews include publications published after 2005,
which leaves the ERP field with a knowledge gap about publications published from
2005 onwards. Additionally, none of the reviews provide an overview of the total
number of academic journal publications regardless of and/or across research
disciplines, leaving a knowledge gap about the entire ERP field. Our review sets out to
fill this gap and aims at providing an overview of the ERP field by analysing ERP
peer-reviewed journal publications from 2000 to 2009. In the review we will answer and
address the following questions:
(1) How many peer-reviewed publications have been published each year and how
has the field evolved?
(2) Which journals have published ERP peer-reviewed publications and which
have published the highest number of publications?
(3) Which authors have contributed the most?
(4) Which disciplines have contributed to the ERP field?
(5) Which topics have been studied?
(6) Which methods have been used?
We also discuss the questions raised below:
(7) Is it fair to state that the ERP field has matured?
(8) Is the ERP research field a new research discipline?
(9) Is the ERP research field an interdisciplinary field?
(10) Is it possible to develop a conceptual framework for important issues in regard
to ERP systems to be used by researchers and practitioners interested in ERP
systems?
(11) Is the methodological framework usable to analyse a specific aspect of ERP, e.g.
BPR?

The methodology used for conducting the literature study, making it possible to
answer and address the above questions, will be presented in the following.
3. Methodology Review of the
To be able to gain an overview of a research field and answer the questions above, a ERP research
structured research methodology is needed. The methodology is divided into two
phases (Cumbie et al., 2005) (see Figure 1). The first phase is the search for and field
selection of papers to include in the review, and the second phase is the classification of
the papers.
In the first phase has to decide which types of publication, e.g. journal publications, 491
conference papers or books, to include in the review. Additionally, one has to decide in
which period and where to search for papers, e.g. in specific journals, bibliography
databases or conference proceedings, which keywords one wants to use in the search
and where the keywords should appear, e.g. either the title, abstract or keywords of the
paper.
In the second phase, based on the questions one wants to address in the review, one
has to develop a framework to use in the analysis of the publications. To make a
comprehensive literature study of a vast amount of publications, the framework
includes two different types of analysis, one being strict head counts and the other
being the classification of papers (see Figure 1). The head counts are simply a matter of
counting, e.g. how many different journals have published papers about the
phenomenon in question, how many different publications have been published per
year and how many different authors have contributed to the field. To be able to
perform a classification analysis one needs first of all the taxonomy according to which
the papers will be classified. The content of this taxonomy will depend on the questions
one wants to address during the review. After the development of the taxonomy, the
classification process of the papers can begin. During the classification process
different analysis approaches can be used, e.g. a classification system that includes a
quest for regularity and standards as well as topics encompassed by the data (Bogdan
and Biklen, 1982), content analysis using a constant comparative method (Cavana et al.,
2001) or content analysis using different coding techniques, e.g. open coding, axial

Figure 1.
Methodological
framework for
comprehensive literature
studies
JEIM coding or selective coding (Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Strauss and Corbin, 1994;
23,4 Webster and Watson, 2002). The choice of analytical approach will depend on the
questions one wants to address in the review.
Our literature review was carried out in accordance with these two phases: phase 1
– selection and accumulation of a journal publication pool and phase 2 – classification
of the publications by research discipline, topic studied and methods used. The two
492 phases will be discussed in the following paragraphs.

3.1 Phase 1: selection and accumulation of a journal publication pool

The first decisions we had to make were which period to include in the literature study.
Not many journal publications were published prior to 2000, e.g. Esteves and Pastor
(2001) and Shehab et al. (2004) were able to find very few published journal papers
about ERP prior to 2000, and Aloini et al. (2007) only included literature published after
1999 in their review on ERP and risk management. It therefore seems reasonable to
conclude that publications about ERP systems were rather rare before 2000, and that
they emerged in 2000 and onwards. We therefore decided to gather publications from
the period from 2000 to 2009.
We chose to include only journal publications in the review. There are two main
reasons for concentrating on journal papers:
(1) journal papers contain more up-to-date data than books (Dale et al., 2001); and
(2) conference papers can be difficult to access.

We chose to search for journal publications in academic journals we had access to

through the library web-search facilities. Nine different bibliographies databases were
used, which gave us access to a very high number of journals (see Table II). The
publications were gathered in three time slots, one in 2004, another at the beginning
of 2008 and the last in late December 2009. During the time span between the three
time slots in the gathering of publications, the coverage of the databases changed
slightly and some databases changed names and publishers, as also illustrated in
Table II.
The papers were, as mentioned previously, collected in three time slots, one in 2004
(the result of this was previously reported in Møller et al. (2004)) the second at the
beginning of 2008 and the last in December 2009. In each of these databases we
searched for the keywords “ERP” and “Enterprise Resource Planning” within titles,
abstracts or keywords. To exclude editorial comments and, e.g. book reviews, the
length of the papers had to be at least four pages. From this initial search we ended up
with a total pool of 1,564 journal publications. During the export of these journal
publications to our EndNote database[1,2], 176 publications were excluded since they
turned out to have been included in the total pool of publications twice and another 139
publications were excluded as it was obvious from their titles that the particular
publications did not deal with ERP systems, but had used the acronym ERP for
something very different, e.g. event-related brain potential, and 62 papers were
excluded since they were published in the 53 different journals not included in the
databases before 2008 and to include them would give us data that were not
comparable, leaving us with a total pool of 1,196 journal publications for analysis and
classification in phase 2.
 Review of the
Emerald Emerald publishes a range of management titles and
library and information services titles by any ERP research
publisher worldwide. The subjects covered include field
management, HRM, marketing, librarianship,
mechanical engineering, electronic and electrical
engineering
ScienceDirect (Elsevier) ScienceDirect is an electronic collection of science, 493
technology and medicine full text and bibliographic
information
Wiley InterScience Wiley InterScience provides access to publications
from John Wiley & Sons. It features over 1,000
journals
EBSCO (Business Source Premier) EBSCO Publishing offers a wide range of full text
and bibliographic databases, and via EBSCOhost the
database Business Source Premier was reached as
well
ProQuest The ProQuest online information service provides
access to thousands of current periodicals and
newspapers
General BusinessFile General BusinessFile International provides access
to a combination of international broker research
reports, trade publications, newspapers, journals and
company directories. It was later renamed Business
& Company Resource Centre
Digital Article Database Service (DADS) DADS provides access to data from several
providers, including databases (such as ABI/Inform,
COMPENDEX and INSPEC), publishers (such as
Academic Press, Blackwell Publishers, Elsevier,
Emerald, Karger, Kluwer, Oxford University Press,
Springer, Swetscan) and organisations (such as
IEEE/IEE Electronic Library – IEL)
ACM Digital Library The library contains 54,000 online articles from 30
journals and 900 proceedings from the Association
for Computing Machinery
AIS Library A service from the Association of Information Table II.
Systems providing full-text access to journals and Bibliographical
conferences sponsored by AIS databases included

During phase 2 an additional 303 journal publications were excluded. Their exclusion
was based on four different criteria:
(1) publications only mentioning ERP or Enterprise Resource Planning systems as
an example of one system among other systems;
(2) some were excluded if ERP or Enterprise Resource Planning systems were only
mentioned as contextual variables;
(3) editorial notes were excluded; and finally
(4) if no abstract existed, the publication was excluded as well.

The final pool of publications had then been reduced to 885 to be included in the
literature review.
JEIM 3.2 Phase 2: analysis
23,4 In this phase we started out by making the head count. We were, as mentioned
previously, interested in disclosing how the field had evolved during the period, which
journals had published ERP papers and finally which authors had contributed to the
field. This was a rather easy task. We:
.
counted the number of papers published per year;
494 .
made a list of the journals that had published ERP articles;
. made a list of the journals that had published the highest number of papers; and
.
identified the authors who had contributed the most publications.

After the head count, the classification of papers according to the taxonomy, containing
in our case contributing research disciplines, dealt-with-topics and used methods (see
Section 2), began. To be able to address the first area of interest – which disciplines had
contributed – we carried out a preliminary reading of the abstracts. During this
preliminary reading five different disciplines emerged (see Table III for the different
disciplines according to which we classified the papers). This set of disciplines was to a
great extent coherent with earlier observations made by Botta-Genoulaz et al. (2005), who
classified ERP research with regard to computer science, information systems,
management and operations management/SCM. To classify each journal we either used
the discipline that the journal itself refers to on its web page, read the “aim and goal” or
classified the journals according to five different disciplines[3].
On account of the subjective nature of classification of the papers according to
method and research topic, we decided to carry out a content analysis, thus providing a
more rigorous process (Cumbie et al., 2005), and to develop a coding form containing
the categories into which to classify the papers. The coding form was created during a
joint pilot study of 20 per cent of the papers, equalling 177 papers. During the pilot
study we jointly read the abstract and used the techniques from open coding principles
(Neuman, 1997) to develop the categories to use in the classification of the papers
according to method used and topic of interest.
In developing the categories, prior to the pilot study, we gained inspiration from
previous studies. For developing categories for the used method, the classification by
Piccolo and Ives (2005) – case study(ies), archival, theoretical and survey – served as

Discipline Definition

Information systems Journals focusing on use or management aspects of

information technology
Accounting Journals focusing on accounting or related themes such as
financial matters
Organisation and management Journals focusing on organisational and management issues
as such, that do not have an explicit technical view
Operation management Journals focusing on an engineering tradition, e.g. focusing
on production planning and control
Computer science Journals focusing on technical aspects of information
technology
Table III. Other Journals focusing on aspects not included in the above-
Research disciplines mentioned five disciplines
the inspiration source; for developing the categories for research topic, the categories by Review of the
Botta-Genoulaz et al. (2005) – implementation, optimisation, management, ERP tool and ERP research
supply-chain management – served as the inspiration source. During the pilot study we
continued to add new categories if the topic or method used in the particular paper was field
not covered by the categories already identified, until no new categories were found
(Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Strauss and Corbin, 1994; Webster and Watson, 2002). After
the joint pilot study we had compiled a coding form consisting of nine categories to be 495
used in the classification of papers according to used methods and nine categories for the
classification of papers according to research topic (see Tables IV and V).
Since analysing and classifying 885 papers based on abstracts is a time-consuming
job, we decided to split the total pool of papers into two (including those from the pilot
study), analysing and classifying 442 each, using the coding form developed during the
pilot study. During the classification, we physically sat in the same room, and when
one of us had difficulties in classifying a paper, we both read the abstract and
discussed it until we agreed on a classification.
With regard to classification according to the method used, various categories and
schemes have previously been applied among researchers. As mentioned previously,
we set out to classify the publications in accordance with the methodology
classification used by Piccolo and Ives (2005). This classification scheme could not,
however, cover the whole ERP literature base, and it was necessary to develop more
categories. We added: descriptive, experiment, design science, combination of methods
and a category that we named “not mentioned”. See Table IV for the methodological
categories used and their descriptions. Piccolo and Ives do not define the four
categories they use; for this purpose we were inspired by Chen and Hirschheim (2004).
As regards classification according to research topic, we set out to classify the
papers in accordance with the topic classification used by Botta-Genoulaz et al. (2005):

Category Description

Case study(ies) Papers reporting on studies that are involved with a single
site or a few sites often over a certain period of time are
located in this category
Archival Papers using secondary data such as public records,
existing data sets and statistics fall into this category
Theoretical Papers analysing existing theory, typically with the aim of
developing new theory, fall into this category
Survey Papers that fall into this category gather data by means of
questionnaires
Experiment This includes papers using either laboratory or field
experiments
Descriptive Papers solely describing or arguing for a phenomenon and
often very practically oriented
Design science Papers that construct systems and/or tools fall into this
category
Combined Papers using a combination of the above-mentioned
categories fall into this category
Not mentioned Papers that do not mention any methods either explicitly or Table IV.
implicitly Methodology categories
JEIM
Topic Issues addressed and description
23,4
Implementation How the ERP system can be introduced into the
organisation – including papers concerning selection, the
various steps of implementation and related problems,
critical success factors, business process alignment during
496 the implementation and organisational diffusion
Optimisation of ERP How ERP can be used better in the organisation – including
papers concerning post-implementation, usefulness,
achievement of competitive advantage through ERP, ERP
users, financial benefits of ERP and ERPII in an
organisational context
Management and ERP issues How the implementation of ERP affects the management
and the organisation – including papers concerning
managerial issues of implementation, the ERP impact on the
organisation, organisational changes, ERP and best
practices, cultural issues in ERP use and finally papers
concerning understanding ERP as a phenomenon
The ERP tool What are ERP systems and ERP modules and applications?
Papers concerned with systems architecture, systems
language and integration norms, customisation, add-ons to
ERP systems and finally ERPII systems as tools
ERP and supply chain management How ERP systems can be used in the context of a group of
companies – papers concerning the use of ERP systems in
system integration with other information technologies and
systems and ERP contribution to cooperation in supply
chains are included in this category
Studying ERP How ERP systems may be studied – papers concerning how
ERP systems can or should be studied, using various
frameworks, are included in this category
ERP and education How education and training in ERP systems can be included
in university curricula – papers concerning the
development of ERP courses, integrating ERP systems into
existing university programmes and lessons learned from
doing so are included in this category
The ERP market and industry How the ERP systems market evolves – papers concerning
market demands, market share of different vendors, macro
diffusion of ERP in particular industries and/or geographic
Table V. areas are included in this category
Topic classification Others Papers that do not fit into any of the above categories

implementation, optimisation, management, the ERP tool and supply-chain

management. We chose to exclude their sixth category – case studies – since we
regard this as a method and not a research topic. During the pilot study we found that
these five categories did not cover the entire range of topics published within the ERP
field. Three additional categories were formulated: studying ERP, ERP and education
and the ERP market and industry. Table V describes each topic in more detail.

4. Findings about the ERP field

In this section our findings from the literature study will be presented, and we will start
by answering the first questions formulated in section 2: how many peer-reviewed
publications have been published each year, how has the field evolved, which journals Review of the
have published ERP peer-reviewed publications and which have published the highest ERP research
number of publications? Which authors have contributed?
field
4.1 Publications and journals
The total number of peer-reviewed journal publications was found to be 885. The
number of papers published per year was rather steady until 2003 (see Figure 2), when 497
116 papers were published, the highest number of papers published in one year. After
2003 the number of publications in 2004 was 105, and the number of papers published
in 2005 and 2006 reached a similar level as at the beginning of the century. In 2007 the
number of publications dropped to 66, the lowest in the period, followed by an increase
in 2008 with 96 papers published, finally to reach a yearly publication rate of 66 in
2009. The high increase in number in 2008 can be explained from our data by the
introduction of new journals with a special interest in ERP systems, e.g. the
International Journal of Enterprise Systems in 2005, and a rather large amount of
papers about ERP in developing countries by the end of the period.
When we looked at the distribution of published ERP research papers, we found
that 226 different journals had published ERP papers from 2000 to 2009 – which
equals 3.9 papers on average in each publishing journal over the entire period.
Approximately 50 per cent of the papers had been published by 20 journals, and three
journals, Industrial Management & Data Systems, the Business Process Management
Journal and the Journal of Enterprise Information Management (see Table VI), had
each published more than 30 papers: in total these 120 papers equal 13 per cent of the
pool. Accounting for 10 per cent of the pool, five journals from various disciplines had
published 20-29 papers each, 16 journals had published around ten to 19 ERP papers
each, accounting for 23 per cent of the pool, and finally 25 journals had published
between five and nine ERP papers, accounting for 18 per cent of the pool. The
remaining 348 papers, 37 per cent, had been published in more than 230 different
journals (see Table VII).
The ten most publishing journals (the ten most publishing journals and the exact
number of publications each year can be found in Table VIII) have published
approximately 30 per cent of the total pool and they have published 2.7 on average
each year. The publication range of numbers and journals publishing ERP papers has
changed during the period (see Figure 3). The Business Process Management Journal,
which has published 43 papers since 2000, published 13 ERP papers in 2001 and 3.75

Figure 2.
Number of ERP journal
publications per year
JEIM
30 þ Business Process Management Journal
23,4 Industrial Management & Data Systems
Journal of Enterprise Information Management
20-29 International Journal of Production Economics
Communications of the ACM
Information & Management
498 Computers in Industry
10-19 International Journal of Enterprise Information Systems
Information Systems Management
Strategic Finance
Journal of Computer Information Systems
European Journal of Operational Research
Journal of Information Systems Education
International Journal of Operations & Production Management
Systems Research and Behavioral Science
Decision Support Systems
Expert Systems with Applications
Information Systems Frontiers
International Journal of Production Research
Table VI. Journal of Strategic Information Systems
Journals with ten or more Information Systems Journal
papers published Journal of Information Technology

Journals Papers Sum

n (%) n (%) (%)

30 þ 3 1 120 14 14
20-29 5 2 93 10 24
10-19 16 7 218 25 49
Table VII. 5-9 25 11 167 19 68
Journals publishing 1-4 177 78 286 32 100
ERP-related research Total 226 100 885 100

papers on average in the period from 2002 to 2006, but after that it did not publish any
ERP papers; in 2008 and 2009 it again published papers, seven each year. A similar
pattern can be found for Industrial Management & Data Systems, which also published
43 ERP papers in the period 2000-2009, niine papers in 2004 and on average 5.33 papers
per year until 2006, but did not publish any ERP papers in 2007; in 2008 and 2009 it
again published papers, five and six respectively. Another journal, which has
published more than 30 papers, the Journal of Enterprise Information Management,
did not publish any papers until 2004 and published seven papers on average per year
in the period 2004-2006, whereas no publications were found in 2007, and again in 2008
it published five papers and in 2009, eight papers. The most publishing journals in the
period did not publish any papers in 2007, but did publish above average ERP
publications in 2008 and 2009. The International Journal of Enterprise Information
Systems did not publish any papers on ERP before 2007 and published as many as 11
papers in 2008.
Journal 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 Total

Business Process Management Journal 1 13 2 3 3 7 0 0 7 7 43

Industrial Management & Data Systems 2 2 5 4 9 6 4 0 5 6 43
Journal of Enterprise Information Management 0 0 0 0 7 6 8 0 5 8 34
International Journal of Production Economics 0 0 2 0 3 5 3 4 5 3 25
Communications of the ACM 13 1 1 2 3 0 1 0 1 1 23
Information & Management 1 0 3 2 4 0 1 5 5 2 23
Computers in Industry 1 1 1 0 2 11 0 3 1 2 22
International Journal of Accounting and Information
Systems 1 1 1 2 3 1 5 2 3 0 19
International Journal of Enterprise and Information
Systems 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 7 11 1 19
Information Systems Management 1 0 2 3 1 3 3 1 2 2 18

most ERP publishing

field

journals over time

Publication in the ten
ERP research
Review of the

Table VIII.
499
JEIM
23,4

500

Figure 3.
Journals over time

In total 1,639 different authors, either as single authors or as co-authors, have

contributed to the total pool of papers; 1,297 authors have contributed to a single paper
only and 190 to two papers etc. (see Table IX). The most contributing author was S.C.
Lenny Koh with 12 publications, followed by E. Bendoly with ten papers.
A. Gunasekaran has published nine papers and D.C. Yen, eight papers. Four authors
have contributed seven papers each, three contributed six and, finally, seven authors
have contributed five papers (see Table X).

Publications Number of authors

1 1,297
2 190
3 36
4 21
5 8
6 3
7 5
8 1
9 1
10 1
11 0
12 1
Table IX.
Authors and publications Note: 1,564 different authors
4.2 Research disciplines Review of the
Of the papers, 31 per cent were published in operations management, being the ERP research
most contributing discipline (see Figure 4), equalling 309 papers (see Table XI for
the exact number of papers in each discipline over time). The second most field
contributing discipline is information systems, which has contributed 233 of the
publications, 24 per cent of the pool. Computer science contributed with 15 per cent
followed closely by organisation and management with 13 per cent of the 501
publications. Accounting accounts for the smallest number of publications, namely 9
per cent, and finally we were not able to classify 8 per cent of the papers according
to the categories used.

Number of publications Author

12 S.C. Lenny Koh

10 E. Bendoly
9 A. Gunasekaran
8 D.C. Yen
7 A. Halingten
7 E.T.G. Wang
7 J. Verville
7 T.M. Somers
6 F.F.-H. Nah
6 J. van Hillegersberg
6 M. Al-Mashari
5 B. Light
5 C. Soh
5 G. Klein
5 J.E. Scott
5 J.J. Jiang Table X.
5 V.A. Mabert The most publishing
5 Y.M. Everdingen authors

Figure 4.
Percentage of papers
published in different
disciplines
 23,4

502
JEIM

Table XI.

discipline over time

Number of papers in each
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 Total

Information systems 17 11 26 26 34 21 18 22 30 20 225

Accounting 7 12 9 14 8 5 8 2 7 3 75
Organisation and management 11 9 11 11 11 12 24 6 4 5 104
Operations management (SCM) 16 33 26 35 36 34 24 19 44 29 296
Computer science 27 11 12 16 10 13 5 11 7 7 119
Other 6 11 9 14 6 3 5 6 5 2 67
84 87 93 116 105 88 84 66 97 66 886
Information systems (%) 20 13 28 22 32 24 21 33 31 30 24
Accounting (%) 8 14 10 12 8 6 10 3 7 5 9
Organisation and management (%) 13 10 12 9 10 14 29 9 4 8 13
Operations management (SCM) (%) 19 38 28 30 34 39 29 29 45 44 31
Computer science (%) 32 13 13 14 10 15 6 17 7 11 15
Other (%) 7 13 10 12 6 3 6 9 5 3 8
(%) 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
In general the number of publications over time in each discipline (see Figure 5) seems Review of the
to have been rather stable during 2000 to 2009, with minor exceptions (see Table XI ERP research
and Figure 6 for the exact number of published papers in each discipline). One
exception is the discipline organisation and management, where the highest number of field
publications was found in 2006, with more than twice as many papers published that
year as in 2003 and 2004. The information systems disciplines seem to have kept their
rather high number of publications during the period, and the percentage of the total 503
number of papers increased during the period. In 2007 papers published within the
information systems discipline accounted for 33 per cent of the total number of papers
published, whereas the information systems discipline “only” accounted for 24 per cent
on average. The most contributing discipline to the ERP research field is operation
management, accounting for 31 per cent of the publications.

4.3 Research topics

Of the research within ERP, 80 per cent can be classified as falling into 4 different
research topics. The highest percentage of research, 30 per cent, focused on

Figure 5.
Disciplines over time

Figure 6.
Discipline over time
(numbers)
JEIM implementation aspects, 20 per cent on managing and ERP systems, 17 per cent on
23,4 optimisation of ERP and finally 14 per cent on the ERP tool itself (see Figure 7). The
last 19 per cent is divided between the remaining research topics.
The changes in research topics of interest (see Figure 8) have only changed slightly
during the period. Most research topics – implementation, supply-chain management,
how to study and education – have been rather stable with no remarkable variation in
504 the percentage of papers being published within these topics. Research into the ERP
tool and the ERP market and industry has changed during the period, in that it has
been reduced by 50 per cent from the first half of the period to the second half. The
percentage of research in the topic “managing and ERP” increased slightly until 2007,
representing as many as 25 per cent of the papers published in 2007, whereas
afterwards it dropped to the same level as at the beginning of the period,
approximately 15 per cent. Research into the optimisation of ERP has increased

Figure 7.
Percentage of papers
presenting different topics

Figure 8.
Topics over time
steadily during the period from only representing 11 per cent in 2000 to representing 30 Review of the
per cent of the publications in 2009 (see Table XII and Figure 9 for detailed numbers of ERP research
publications within the category research topic).
field
4.4 Research methods
As regards methods used in studying ERP, case studies have been the most prevalent
and were used in 22 per cent of the papers (see Figure 10), followed by papers using 505
surveys, which account for 15 per cent. A total of 12 per cent of the papers have used a
descriptive and/or normative method; 11 per cent of the papers have been strictly
theoretical; 9 per cent have used design-science methods; 8 per cent of the papers have
used archival methods; 5 per cent have used combined methods; and only 2 per cent
have used experimental methods. We were not able to classify 16 per cent of the papers
on the basis of the abstract, since no methodological consideration was mentioned at all
(see Table XIII and Figure 11 for detailed numbers of publications within the research
method category).
The methods used (see Figure 12) have changed during the period. The most
remarkable change has taken place in the categories “not mentioned”, “theoretical” and
“survey”. Whereas in 2000 as many as 43 per cent of the published papers did not
mention the research method in their abstracts, this was only approximately 5 per cent
of the papers in 2007, 2008 and 2009. Theoretically based papers increased from only
representing 4 per cent of the papers published in 2000 to representing on average 14
per cent of the papers published in the last three years. An even more remarkable
change can be found in the category “survey”. In 2000 6 per cent of the published
papers used survey data, whereas 29 per cent did in 2009. The percentage use of case
studies was the same in 2000 and in 2009, approximately 17 per cent, whereas almost
30 per cent of the papers from 2002 to 2005 used case studies. Experimental studies
were not published until 2002, after which the percentage of papers using experimental
methods increased to 8 per cent of the published papers in 2009. The rest of the
used-method categories have represented a rather stable percentage of the published
papers during the period (see Table XIII and Figure 11 for detailed numbers of
publications within the category methods).

5. Discussion of the findings

In this section we discuss the findings and address the previously raised discussion
questions: is it fair to state that the ERP field has matured, has the ERP research field
become a new research discipline, is the ERP research field is an interdisciplinary field?
Further we present a conceptual framework for important issues in regards to ERP
systems and finally we discuss the structured methodological framework usefulness in
analysing a specific aspect of interest in regards ERP system, here BPR.
In the previous section we raised the question of whether it is fair to state that the
ERP field has become mature. To address this question we analysed which methods
the different journal publications had used. Our findings suggest that the dominating
method used has been case studies with a slight decline in the last part of the period, 15
per cent of the papers in 2009, whereas surveys had already taken over as the most
used method in 2006. Only 5 per cent of the publications had used surveys in 2000; this
percentage increased remarkably during the time of investigation to 29 per cent in
2009. At the same time there was a dramatic fall in papers that did not mention which
 23,4

506
JEIM

Table XII.
Research topic over time
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 Total

Implementation 22 21 25 39 24 29 27 22 35 18 262
Optimisation of ERP 9 15 16 14 21 19 16 14 26 24 174
Managing and ERP systems 11 20 15 16 16 20 21 14 10 7 150
The ERP tool 20 13 16 24 13 8 6 6 11 7 124
ERP and supply chain management 6 6 6 5 10 8 4 4 9 3 61
How to study ERP 1 1 2 1 2 1 2 3 0 0 13
Education 3 3 5 1 10 0 1 2 3 2 30
ERP – market and industry 7 6 7 13 7 3 7 1 3 4 58
Other (combined) 24 2 1 3 2 0 0 0 0 1 14
84 87 93 116 105 88 84 66 97 66 886
Implementation (%) 26 24 27 34 23 33 32 33 36 27 30
Optimisation of ERP (%) 11 17 17 12 20 22 19 21 27 36 20
Managing and ERP systems (%) 13 23 16 14 15 23 25 21 10 11 17
The ERP tool (%) 24 15 17 21 12 9 7 9 11 11 14
ERP and supply chain management (%) 7 7 6 4 10 9 5 6 9 5 7
How to study ERP (%) 1 1 2 1 2 1 2 5 0 0 1
Education (%) 4 3 5 1 10 0 1 3 3 3 3
ERP – market and industry (%) 8 7 8 11 7 3 8 2 3 6 7
Other (combined) (%) 6 2 1 3 2 0 0 0 0 2 2
(%) 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
 Review of the
ERP research
field

507

Figure 9.
Research topics over time
(numbers)

Figure 10.
Percentage of papers
based on different
methods

method they had used, from 43 per cent to 3 per cent in 2009. When we combine the
above with the fact that the number of theoretical papers rose from 4 per cent to 14 per
cent, it is fair to state that the ERP field has matured, the amount of theoretical papers
has increased and at the same time publication demands for explicating the research
methods used have increased remarkably during the period 2000-2009.
To address the question of whether the ERP research field is a new research
discipline, we analysed our findings according to the number of published papers,
contributions from authors and the evolution within numbers of publications in
specific journals. The number of published papers reached its highest in 2003 with 116
papers. After 2003 the number reduced year by year (2008 being an exception) to 66
papers in 2009, clearly indicating that the interest has declined. Additionally, our
findings show that a lot of different authors and journals have contributed to the ERP
research field: 1,654 authors have contributed to the 885 papers published in 227
different journals, a variety of authors have contributed only one or few publications
 time
23,4

508
JEIM

Table XIII.
Research methods over
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 Total

Case study(ies) 14 18 22 34 22 24 15 11 21 10 191

Archival 6 7 7 12 8 11 5 7 4 6 73
Theoretical 3 8 4 4 17 8 14 11 21 9 99
Survey 5 5 5 16 13 15 16 19 20 19 133
Combination 2 4 3 1 5 5 9 1 6 5 41
Design science 7 4 10 16 12 10 6 6 8 4 83
Not mentioned 36 25 20 20 13 7 11 3 6 2 143
Descriptive/normative 11 16 20 12 12 8 5 6 8 6 104
Experimental 0 0 2 1 3 0 3 2 3 5 19
84 87 93 116 105 88 84 66 97 66 886
Case study(ies) (%) 17 21 24 29 21 27 18 17 22 15 22
Archival (%) 7 8 8 10 8 13 6 11 4 9 8
Theoretical (%) 4 9 4 3 16 9 17 17 22 14 11
Survey (%) 6 6 5 14 12 17 19 29 21 29 15
Combination (%) 2 5 3 1 5 6 11 2 6 8 5
Design science (%) 8 5 11 14 11 11 7 9 8 6 9
Not mentioned (%) 43 29 22 17 12 8 13 5 6 3 16
Descriptive/normative (%) 13 18 22 10 11 9 6 9 8 9 12
Experimental (%) 0 0 2 1 3 0 4 3 3 8 2
(%) 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
 Review of the
ERP research
field

509

Figure 11.
Methods over time
(numbers)

Figure 12.
Methods over time

and fewer than 15 per cent of the authors have contributed three or more papers. Our
findings indicate that a great variety of authors have contributed only one or a few
papers to the field. The fact that the most publishing journals during the period did not
publish any papers in 2007 and that the journals that published the highest amount of
papers in 2009 published above their own average leaves us to suggest that the “quick
movers” as regards publishing ERP research lost interest in ERP-related research after
a while, and that the journals that published ERP papers at the end of the period were
“slow starters” and were dominating as the publication channel at the end of the
period. These findings leave us to suggest that the publications on ERP were the result
of an interest in an empirical phenomenon, from both authors and journals, and that
the interest declined during the second half of the period. It seems fair to suggest that
JEIM the interest in ERP was the result of a temporary widespread interest in an empirical
phenomenon, rather than the beginning of a new research discipline.
23,4 The next discussion point that we want to address is whether the ERP research field
is an interdisciplinary field as suggested by Esteves and Bohorquez (2007). Esteves
and Bohorquez (2007) further state that ERP-related research could and should be
interdisciplinary. It is one thing to suggest and discuss; to reflect on real research
510 practice is another. Our findings show that the ERP research field has been an
interdisciplinary field. Our list of five different research disciplines accounts for more
than 90 per cent of all the papers, and the distribution of papers among disciplines is
quite balanced applying the taxonomy we have used. Even though the two disciplines
of operations management (SCM) and information systems (IS) together count for 55
per cent of all the papers, no discipline can be said to be predominant. Based on the
findings above our study confirms that the field of ERP is very much an
interdisciplinary field. Esteves and Pastor (2001) suggest in their paper that ERP
systems offer many potential areas for research and, due to their pervasive nature at
that time, they expected ERP systems to be of interest to a wide range of scholarly
disciplines (from software engineering to accounting). Their suggestions have “come
true” and the ERP research field has indeed been interdisciplinary.
The next question that we set out to discuss based on the literature review was the
question of whether it is possible to develop a conceptual framework of areas of
concern in regard to ERP. Based on the literature study we believe this is indeed
possible. Using an open coding technique in the content analysis of the 885 abstracts
with the purpose of dividing the categories to be used into the classification of the
papers gave us a good indication of the issues of concern (see Figure 13). An indication
of the relevant issues in each “area of concern” will be presented in terms of questions
to be asked:
(1) Implementation:
.
Which criteria should be used in selecting the ERP system, e.g. how well
does the ERP system fit the business strategy (Wei et al., 2005; Wei and
Wang, 2004)?
.
Which strategy should the implementation use, e.g. the “comprehensive”,
“middle road” or “vanilla” implementation strategy (Parr and Shanks, 2000)?
.
Should a business process reengineering process take place before or
simultaneously with the ERP implementation (Koch, 2001b)?
.
Which work tasks and organisational and managerial challenges can be
expected in each phase of the implementation (Markus et al., 2000;
Kraemmergaard and Rose, 2002)?
.
Which critical success factors should we have in mind during the
implementation (Ngai et al., 2008; Dezdar and Sulaiman, 2009)?
(2) Optimisation and post-implementation:
.
How can we prioritise between the different ERP maintenance initiatives (Ng
et al., 2002)?
.
How can we optimise the use of the ERP system in the organisation?
.
How can we examine the process of system review during the
post-implementation phase (Nicolaou, 2004)?
 Review of the
ERP research
field

511

Figure 13.
Conceptual framework for
“areas of concern”
regarding ERP systems

.
Which business benefits of ERP systems evolve during the
post-implementation period (Staehr, 2010)?
.
Which strategic, managerial, operational and organisational benefits are the
result of the ERP implementation (Shang and Seddon, 2002)?
(3) Management and organisation:
.
Which organisational changes and impact can be expected implementing an
ERP system and can they be predicted (Rikhardsson and Kraemmergaard,
2006)?
.
How do the communities exhibit distinct culture guides but also constrain
practice in regard to ERP implementation and use (Wagner and Newell,
2004)?
.
How do the characteristics of ERP systems (specifically its integration,
standardisation, routinisation and centralisation) facilitate and reinforce
processes of management accounting change (Scapens and Jazayeri, 2003)?
JEIM .
To want extent does the ERP-led BPR implementation leads to fundamental
23,4 changes within an organisation’s structure, culture and management process
(Huq et al., 2006)?
(4) The ERP tool:
.
What are ERP systems (Kumar and van Hillegersberg, 2000)?
512 .
How is an ERP constructed (Sprott, 2000)?
.
How can ERP systems be customised and configured (Volkoff, 2003)?
.
How to integrate ERP systems and other systems (Frank, 2004; Wang et al.,
2005; Zhang et al., 2006)?
.
How can be expected to be the future development of ERP systems (Ford,
2000; Smets-Solanes and de Carvalho, 2003; Møller, 2005)?
(5) Supply chain management and ERP:
.
How can ERP be used as a technology enabler for supply chain management
(Boubekri, 2001)?
.
Which impact will ERP have on supply chain management (Akkermans
et al., 2003)?
.
How well are the integration of the supply chain management and the
ERP systems for competing in the future supply chain (Lenny Koh et al.,
2006)?
. How can ERP and SCM systems be integrated with CRM, PLM,
e-procurement and e-marketplaces to foster cooperation and collaboration
across the entire value chain (Nah, 2004)?
(6) Studying ERP:
.
What has over time been written about ERP (Botta-Genoulaz et al., 2005;
Esteves and Bohorquez, 2007)?
.
What are the calls for and suggestion on ERP research agendas and issues
(Lee, 2000; O’Leary, 2002; Sutton, 2006)?
(7) Education and training:
.
How to teach and compose the content of an ERP course (McComb and
Sharifi, 2002; Nielson, 2002; Boyle, 2007)?
.
How can different courses be integrated using ERP systems (Cannon et al.,
2004; Johnson et al., 2004)?
.
Where and how has ERP influenced the IS curriculum (Becerra-Fernandez
et al., 2000; Bradford et al., 2003; Antonucci et al., 2004; Hawking et al., 2004)?
(8) Market and industry:
.
How are ERP systems adopted in specific country, e.g. India or Greece
(Tarafdar and Roy, 2003; Kostopoulos et al., 2004)?
.
How can ERP systems be supplied to customers, e.g. through ASP’s (Bennett
and Timbrell, 2000; Ekanayaka et al., 2002)?
 .
How are ERP systems adopted in a specific industry or type of Review of the
companies (Everdingen et al., 2000; Craighead and Laforge, 2003; Yang ERP research
et al., 2006)?
.
What are the market share and demand of ERP (Arnesen and Thompson,
field
2003)?

The last discussion point we want to address is whether the methodological framework 513
is usable to analyse a specific aspect of ERP e.g. BPR? To address this question we had
to select the papers that dealt with BPR. To select these papers we searched the ERP
EndNote file for papers with “BPR” or “Business Process Re-engineering” in either
their titles, abstracts or keywords. This search left us with 42 papers in total. Making
the head-count of the papers, showed that more than half of the papers addressed the
topic of implementation, almost half were published within the operations
management discipline and 38 per cent were using case study as a research method.
The papers had been published by 24 different journals and only two authors;
S. Subramoniam and M. Tounsi, have contributed with more than one paper.
Comparing these findings with the findings of the total pool of 885 papers, indicates
that BPR related ERP research to a higher degree than ERP research in general uses
case study as a research method and relates it to implementation issues.
Next we set out to find out which theoretical lenses researchers have used to
studying the link between ERP and BPR. We initially analysed the 42 papers by
reading the abstracts. During this initial analysis 22 papers were excluded since they
either were strictly descriptive papers or did not mention any link between ERP and
BPR. This left us with 20 papers to analyse for theoretical lenses. The result of this
analysis can be seen in Table XIV.
Using this methodology quickly gave us insight into how the publications link ERP
and BPR in the ERP research field. Our findings show that different theoretical lenses
have been used, that theory on critical success factors is dominant in eight out of the 20
papers, followed by theory on process modelling. The Business Process Management
Journal accounts for almost half of the publications using theoretical lenses. The
question as to whether the methodological framework can be used to analyse a specific
aspect of ERP, is yes. In a short time we got valuable insight into the aspect of BPR
within the ERP research field. This insight is believed to be useful for researchers who
want to study the link between BPR and ERP using theoretical lenses and researchers
who want to position their own research within the field, e.g. what has already been
done and which theoretical lenses will be able to provide new insight. Finally using the
methodological framework quickly gave us an understanding of which journals that
had published the highest number of papers studying the link between ERP and BPR
using theoretical lenses.

6. Conclusion and implications

We set out to conduct a comprehensive literature review on ERP based on a vast
amount of papers published. To be able to conduct such a review we developed a
methodological framework, consisting of two phases: phase one, selecting and
accumulating the publication pool, and phase two, analysing the publication pool.
Using this framework for conducting the comprehensive literature review provided us
with an overview of the ERP research field regardless of research disciplines, research
JEIM
Theoretical lens Journal Author
23,4
Critical success factors Business Process Management Journal Nah and Lau (2001)
International Journal of Operations & Schrenederjans and Kim
Production Management (2003)
European Journal of Operational Research Somers and Nelson (2003)
514 European Journal of Operational Research Umble et al. (2003)
International Journal of Enterprise Emad (2007)
Information Systems
Business Process Management Journal Ming-Ling and Wade (2008)
Computers in Industry Ngai et al. (2008)
Business Process Management Journal El Sawah et al. (2008)
Formal (business) Communications of the ACM Scheer and Habermann
modelling (2000)
Computers & Industrial Engineering Chiplunkar et al. (2003)
Business Process Management Journal Samaranayake (2009)
Connectionist model Journal of Organizational and End User Burns et al. (2009)
Computing
Innovation processes Industrial Engineer Subramoniam (2008)
Business Process Management Journal Newman and Zhao (2008)
Organizational Business Process Management Journal Koch (2001a)
sociology
Change management Journal of Change Management Huq et al. (2006)
Supply chain theory International Journal of Production Byrne and Heavey (2006)
Table XIV. Economics
Theoretical lenses used in Object orientation Business Process Management Journal Subramoniam and Tounsi
BPR linked ERP research (2009)
categorised by journals Organizational memory Business Process Management Journal Stijn and Wensley (2001)
and authors Adoption model Business Process Management Journal Lee (2008)

topics and research traditions and a conceptual framework of “areas of concern” in

regard to ERP systems. Furthermore we have “tested” whether the methodological
framework may be useful to analyse a specific aspect of ERP. Our study reveals that
more than 250 journals have published papers about ERP, and that the 20 most
publishing journals have published approximately 30 per cent of the publications. The
operation management discipline has published the largest amount of the papers, 31
per cent, followed by the IS discipline yielding 24 per cent of the publications, but no
discipline has predominance. Studies on the implementation of ERP have been the
most researched topic, accounting for 29 per cent of the papers, followed by studies on
the management (18 per cent) and optimisation of ERP (17 per cent). Case studies have
been the most used method, used in 22 per cent of the papers, but in the later part of the
decade the use of this method is declining on the expense of, e.g. surveys.
Additionally, our review and analysis reveal that the body of academic knowledge
about ERP systems has reached a certain maturity, that the ERP research field is very
much an interdisciplinary field and that the field has been driven by an interest in an
empirical phenomenon more than indicating that the ERP research is a new research
discipline.
Based on the classification of the papers according to the topic of interest a useful
conceptual framework for “areas of concern” with regard to ERP systems has been
developed. Seven areas of concern were identified: implementation, Review of the
post-implementation, organisational change and managerial implications, the ERP ERP research
market and industry, education and training, supply-chain management and the ERP
system itself, issues that have implications for both managers and researchers. For field
managers, the conceptual framework can assist in creating an understanding of the
broad spectra issues of concern that one has to take into consideration in regard to ERP
systems and the questions one needs to deal with and be aware of when involved with 515
ERP systems. For researchers with an interest in ERP systems, the conceptual
framework can be used for positioning their own research and interests, and in creating
an understanding of the broader context of ERP-related research.
The usefulness of the methodological framework developed in the present paper
was confirmed by applying it to a specific aspect of ERP research, namely BPR. With a
limited amount of efforts the 42 papers published on BPR and ERP were analysed
showing that BPR related ERP research to a higher degree than ERP research in
general is based on case-studies and is related to implementation issues. The main
theoretical lens applied in the papers was that of critical success factors. The results
can also be used to identify the journals favouring this type of papers (e.g. Business
Process Management Journal ) thus providing guidelines for where to publish and an
understanding of the nature of the specific (sub-)field.
Some would probably argue that other interesting analyses could have been
performed and findings found, based on the total pool of journal publications and the
EndNote file, e.g. a citation analysis to see who has had the greatest impact in terms of
references within the field; a correlation analysis to see whether there is any correlation
between topic and research discipline; a sub-literature review to analyse each discipline
to see what the particular discipline has focused on; a sub-literature review to analyse
trends and progress in academic knowledge in the different research topics, e.g.
implementation during the period, etc. We would certainly support these arguments
and hopefully others will take up these challenges. The free access to our EndNote file
will hopefully serve as a motivator in this respect.
We have provided the reader with an overview of the ERP research field and a
conceptual framework of the different areas of concern. The findings can hopefully act
as a foundation for researchers for further research in ERP, e.g. where to locate and
publish different types of ERP-related research, and assist other researchers in the
identification of related studies in the literature review phase of their work. Finally, the
bibliographical EndNote database and its rich set of empirical data can hopefully be
used by others in future research and analyses.

Notes
1. The EndNote database is available for free download at the web sites: www.asb.dk/article.
aspx?pid ¼ 23792
2. Bibliographical data from each paper were organised in an End-Note database fully
populated with meta-data and with easy access to a full-text library.
3. We used the term discipline to include (open) groups of scholars who interact, meet at
conferences and publish in the same range of journals – and may be members of the same
association.
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Corresponding author
Pernille Kraemmergaard can be contacted at: pkj@epa.aau.dk

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