As organizations strive to remain competitive despite economic pressures and the rapid pace of technology innovation, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems provide businesses with the functional best practices and customisable capabilities they need to adapt to these changes. However, the high rate of failure of these Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems remain a challenge for the managers who are usually tasked with ensuring the huge investments achieve its purpose and yield a return on investment. In attempting to explain the reasons behind these Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation failures, previous research has identified user adoption as one of the main drivers of ERP implementation success. An abundance of technology adoption theories and change management models have been proposed as solutions to user adoption, by measuring different factors they consider are important to the adoption of these systems. However, ERP systems still fail to achieve their intended purpose because these theories have not been able to explicitly explain how these factors impact on adoption. To address this gap, this research takes a comprehensive approach to identifying the change management influences on user adoption by integrating change management and technology adoption constructs. The main contribution of this research is a common-sense perspective of the realities of user resistance. The study provides a causal model derived from Structural equation modelling, which explains the multiple influence relationships between the measured constructs. An adoption tool is also developed for managers to use as a yardstick to benchmark the effectiveness of an implementation strategy. Using a structural equation modelling approach, a theory was developed from a survey of 616 ERP users across 6 organizations. Six constructs were identified as the key influences of user adoption – Trust, Communication and Engagement, System Qualities, Training, Organizational Benefits and Resistance. The theory explains the multiple influence relationships between these constructs and Adoption, and assists in the pinpointing of failure points that need to be addressed by Enterprise Resource Planning project managers. The resulting theory developed indicates the multiple influence relationships between these constructs as determinants of Adoption of ERP systems. In addition, the theory assists in the pinpointing of failure points that need to be addressed by Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) project managers.

This thesis investigates Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) adoption and implementation in Service Sector Organisations (SSOs). ERP is a business management system that has emerged to support organisations to use a system of integrated applications to enhance their Information Technology (IT) infrastructures, enhance business processes and deliver high quality of services. Regardless of the fact that several other sector organisations have adopted and implemented ERP systems, its application in SSOs is rather inadequate. Among other reasons, two core rationales can be attributed to the latter fact – firstly, SSOs lack the sufficient knowledge, expertise and training to implement such sophisticated integrated systems and secondly, the top management lacks the ability to take appropriate decisions for ERP adoption and implementation. However, merely focusing on a number of factors influencing ERP adoption and implementation may not be suffice, as there is a need for a systematic decision-making process for adopting and implementing ERP systems in SSOs. The limited number of ERP systems’ applications in SSOs has resulted in inadequate research in this area with many issues, like its adoption and implementation requiring further exploration. Despite, the implications of ERP systems have yet to be assessed in SSOs, leaving ample scope for relevance and producing a unique piece of research work. Thus, the author demonstrates that it is of high importance to investigate this area within SSOs and contribute towards successful ERP adoption and implementation. This thesis makes a step forward and contributes to the body of knowledge as it: investigates factors influencing the decision-making process for ERP adoption and implementation in SSOs, prioritises the importance of factors influencing ERP adoption and implementation, evaluates ERP lifecycle phases and stages, maps the ERP factors on different phases and stages of the ERP lifecycle, and in doing so, to propose a model for ERP adoption and implementation in SSOs. The author claims that such an ERP adoption and implementation process in SSOs is significant and novel as: it extends established norms for ERP adoption and implementation, by including Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique for prioritising the importance of factors, thus, facilitating SSOs to produce more robust proposals for ERP adoption and implementation. The author further assess the proposed ERP adoption and implementation model by using a qualitative, interpretive, multiple case study research strategy. Findings from two case studies demonstrate that such a systematic approach contributes towards more robust decisions for ERP adoption and implementation and indicates that it is acceptable by the case study organisations. The thesis proposes, assesses and presents a novel model for ERP adoption and implementation in SSOs and contributes to the body of knowledge by extending the literature.

The focus of this master’s thesis is on family-run small and medium enterprises and their adoption to information systems. The motivation for this research is to understand the family businesses’ challenges related to technology adoption, so that the level of hesitancy many family SMEs are having with the process can be understood and minimised. In addition, by understanding family businesses’ challenges related to information systems adoption, we can understand if they are different entities from non-family SMEs, and whether or not they require specialised guidance and support. To achieve the objectives of the master’s thesis, a qualitative multiple case study approach was undertaken involving three family SMEs who were interviewed using a semi-structured interview guide which was inspired by the four key contexts of the Decision-Maker-Technology-Organisation-Environment model. Upon the completion of a thematic analysis of the data, a total of seven themes emerged which can be used to help describe and answer how family SMEs perceive information systems adoption and the challenges. From the findings it was discovered that family SMEs usually hire relatives when they have a vacancy instead of hiring an individual who is more qualified and experienced in the job role, as it is easier and convenient to make use of the trusting relations between family members. In the majority of cases, this means that the family SMEs usually have a limited level of skills including IT knowledge and to overcome this issue they seek help from sources outside of their organisation. The results of this master’s thesis research show that Family SMEs usually have a positive outlook when it comes to carrying out the information systems adoption process,but despite this, hesitancy to initiate the information systems adoption process arose from the lack of awareness of the technology and its possibilities as well as the high cost of funding and setting up the information system.