The Role of Innovation Projects in Institutionalization: The Case of Resource Planning Systems

This paper addresses the contradiction between the world-wide spread of projects implementing enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems innovation by Adam F. and Sammon, D. (2003) and extensive evidence of implementation failure by applying the lens of institutional theory to the long-run development of this innovation. The paper analyses the contribution of these projects to the institutionalization of RP systems by highlighting three key mechanisms which they advanced: role specialization, the production of discourse and boundary-spanning activities. The paper argues that, in the case of innovation projects, these mechanisms of institutionalization mediate the interplay between project-level implementation and the wider spread of RP systems innovation by shifting the ´knowledge barriers´ which arise between the designers and users of an innovation over time by Attewell, P. (1992).