Business Innovation in ERP Orchestration Theory: Multicasts from the west and East

Despite the general dearth of research into Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) as a discipline, a few papers have investigated the post-implementation period of this technology. In this paper, ERP is defined as an IT infrastructure that integrates different information systems and technological artefacts into a single system. However, the ability to utilize the ERP asset portfolio to enable organizations to sustain innovation in their business has not been investigated in the literature. From this perspective, it is not clearly known how ERP’sassets and organizational capabilities are orchestrated to realize business innovation.The Grounded Theory Approach(GTA),using a critical realist paradigm, has been used through interviewing thirteen ERP practitioners from different organizations and eightconsultantsin ERP systems. A new taxonomy of ERP benefits is deployed to address the different organizational capabilities and ERP assets required to realize each group of benefits. The ERP asset orchestration theory is developed to understand how organizations’ business innovation can be diffused by deploying these assets. This theory also guides decision makers on why and when they should purchase and attach new technological artefacts to an existing ERP system. At a micro-level, we propose a mature framework, called in this paper a “cone of innovation”, for mapping business innovation mechanisms as a result of deploying ERP assets.