Barriers to the successful exploitation of ERP systems in Chinese state-owned enterprises

Adopting a systems perspective, the research presented in this paper aims at identifying, assessing and discussing potential cultural, organisational and system barriers to the successful exploitation of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems in the context of Chinese State Owned Enterprises (SOE). The study adopted a deductive research design by using a cross-sectional questionnaire survey. The questionnaire design was based on a theoretical ontology of barriers drawn from a systematic literature review. The questionnaire was sent to 118 selected Chinese SOEs, from which 42 valid and usable responses were received and analysed. The findings of this study identified that managers in Chinese SOEs often perceived system barriers as most critical to ERP exploitation, but they seemed to overlook the fact that organisational barriers are the mainly triggers of the complicated network of ERP barriers and thus are in reality more important than the system ones.