Understanding Individual Level ERP Assimilation: A Multi-Case Study

Assimilation of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems in organizations has been considered as one of the critical steps towards the realization of the intended benefits. This study extends the assimilation research from the organizational level to the individual level with the argument that ultimately it is the individual users who transform the systems´ capability into organizational performance through daily activities. We conceptualized and defined individual level assimilation in terms of transactional users, power user, and VIP users. Interviews with users at all levels in five organizations revealed that the key drivers for individual level assimilation include influence of supervisors, performance evaluation schemes, intrinsic motivation, job specification, perceived usefulness, and user absorptive capacity.