The effect of organizational support on ERP implementation

Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose a model to examine the impact of organizational support on behavioral intention (BI) regarding enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation based on the technology acceptance model (TAM). Design/methodology/approach – A research model is proposed which describes the effects of organizational support, both formal and informal, on factors of TAM. A survey questionnaire is developed to test the proposed model. A total of 700 of questionnaires are distributed to users in small and medium enterprises that have implemented ERP systems in Korea and 209 responses are used for analyses. Structural equation modeling is employed to test the research hypotheses. Findings – The results indicate that the organizational support is an important factor for perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease of use (PEOU). PU and PEOU seem to lead to a higher level of interest in the ERP system and BI to use the system. The most notable finding of our study is that organizational support is positively associated with factors of TAM. Research limitations/implications – The survey data used in this paper are collected from small‐ and medium‐sized companies in South Korea. Thus, the respondents in these firms might have been trained at different levels or on different modules of ERP, which would yield diversity in subject experience with different ERP systems. Originality/value – To improve the efficiency and effectiveness of ERP implementation in a real world environment, organizations need to better understand user satisfaction. The TAM model provides a theoretical construct to explain how user satisfaction is affected.