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Understanding End-Users Acceptance of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System in Project-Based Sectors
Young Hoon Kwak, Jane Park, Boo Young Chung, and Saumyendu Ghosh, Senior Member, IEEE
AbstractThis study aims at providing an alternative view of users enterprise resource planning (ERP) acceptance. Despite the large body of literature, there are still empirical inquiries to investigate the ERP system implementation from end-users perspectives as well as from different organizational contexts. To address these issues, we set a project-based sector as our population of interest and seek to understand how project management practices are interrelated with end-users cognitive perception, and in the end, with their behavioral intention of using the ERP system. In doing so, this study incorporates the best practices of ERP system implementation projects, internal support, external (consultant) support, and functionality selection, into the extended technology acceptance model (TAM) that includes belief constructs and socioenvironmental construct (subjective norm). The empirical analyses show that managerial practices and socioenvironmental factor are signicantly related to the original TAM variables in the context of ERP system. One of the interesting ndings is the negative effect of consultant support on perceived usefulness, but positive effect on the perceived ease of use, suggesting a useful reference for future research. This study extends the existing literature by investigating potential managerial and socioenvironmental factors affecting user adoption behavior in a different organizational context. This study would also benet project-based sectors by offering valuable managerial insights that enable them to appreciate and improve end-users ERP system acceptance and utilization. Index TermsEnterprise resource planning (ERP) system, project-based sector, project management practices, technology acceptance model (TAM).

I. INTRODUCTION A. ERP, Project-Based Sectors, and Users Acceptance

REVIOUS research has suggested that information technology (IT) can promote organizational performance by enhancing operational efciency and innovation [23]. Among various technologies, ERP systems are described as the most

Manuscript received January 15, 2010; revised August 9, 2010 and November 23, 2010; accepted January 14, 2011. Review of this manuscript was arranged by Department Editor J. K. Pinto. Y. H. Kwak and J. Park are with the Department of Decision Sciences, School of Business, The George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052 (e-mail: kwak@gwu.edu; janepark@gwmail.gwu.edu). B.Y. Chung is with the Smart City Development Group, Samsung SDS Co., Ltd., Seoul, Korea (e-mail: constopia@gmail.com). S. Ghosh is with the A. J. Clark School of Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742 USA (e-mail: sghosh12@umd.edu). Color versions of one or more of the gures in this paper are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TEM.2011.2111456

important development in the corporate use of IT in the 1990s [19]. ERP systems enable rms to achieve better performance by standardizing information and integrating various business functions including nance, human resource, manufacturing, sales, marketing, etc. [39], [83]. For this reason, ERP systems have become a pervasive feature of dynamic business conditions. Ko et al. [44] reported that more than 60% of rms in the United States are in some stage of implementing ERP systems. Skibniewski and Ghosh [62] also reported that globally the expected revenue of ERP software was approximately $31 billion in 2006. Given such widespread demand and the magnitude of the expenditure, academic researchers as well as practitioners have paid a great attention to the mechanism of successful ERP system implementation. A global phenomenon of the ERP system implementation has also brought about changes in project-based sectors, which is noteworthy in the eld of organizational innovation. Unlike manufacturing or other process-oriented sectors, project-based sectors such as engineering and construction, shipbuilding, media and entertainment, and others have different challenges associated with their business processes [70]. Every project that they engage in is unique and involves multiple stakeholders working together to meet its goals and objectives that deals with unique set of complex data and information. The abundance of disintegrated information and its time sensitiveness in activities often make projects difcult to manage, suggesting that the obsolete legacy systems need to be replaced to cope with highly fragmented, less standardized, and geographically dispersed business processes [17]. Recently, a number of projectbased rms started to regard the ERP system implementation as an inevitable process of innovation [51]. Some are already done with the implementation, and others are in the process of, or seriously considering the ERP system [17], [70]. Major ERP systems vendors such as systems applications and products (SAP) and Oracle also started to provide specic solutions for project-based organizations [17]. It is important to note that decisions associated with the ERP system implementation are owned by senior level managers without looking at the big picture [30] and that most of the end users are involved merely at the later phases of the project such as training phase [82]. This leads us to a question; do end users share the same vision with senior managers in the ERP system implementation? Several case studies report that this is not always the case [4], [51]. According to them, due to the inadequate involvement in the projects, end users usually have different perspectives about the necessity of the system.

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Moreover, it is reported that end users are generally more skeptical about the newly implemented complex system, which is reected in the rejection or under-utilization [4]. Researchers have identied those user-related factors as critical risk factors for the ERP implementation projects, let alone the complex nature of the projects [14], [53], [55]. That is, even if a system is installed on time and within budget, it is undesirable if users perceive the system useless for their work processes or need to spend a long time in guring out how to use it. In the context of project-based sectors, the notion of improving user acceptance becomes more challenging. One reason for this can be attributed to the conservative nature of them, regardless of the industry, implying that the obsolete legacy systems are not easily given up unless users are strongly convinced of the necessity of new systems [41], [51]. In addition, the fact that a majority of users are not IT experts could make them remain at the very fundamental level of applications in the work processes [17]. Lack of understanding of their technological capacity and little exposure to the best practices provided by the ERP systems also make them difcult to invest in such a system [70]. In a highly fragmented project-based setting, multiple stakeholders from various disciplines come and go, and take different ownership as project proceeds [66]. It is suggested that a high level of interdepartmental collaboration is required to reengineer the ow of information and communication. Thus, there has to be a different paradigm that incorporates input from end users who value their acceptance to address varying degrees of acceptance across end -users especially in project-based sectors [8]. B. Research Objectives and Questions So far, very limited empirical research has been done to investigate the technology acceptance from users perspectives, let alone project-based sectors ERP system implementation. By neglecting users perspectives of the system, it is likely to bring about their perfunctory utilization of the system and, consequently, may hinder organizations from achieving what they expected from the expensive ERP system. Also, by looking merely at conventional process-based sectors, it is hard to establish empirical validation across a variety of organizational context. Given the large body of knowledge on the ERP system projects, we think that this is a signicant void in the existing literature. Therefore, we set a project-based sector as our population of interest and seek to understand how project management practices are interrelated with end-users cognitive perception, and in the end, with their behavioral intention to use in the context of ERP system. At the same time, we include a socioenvironmental factor (subjective norm) to model the reality better where multiple stakeholders interact when using the organization-wide systems. In doing so, we are extending the technology acceptance model (TAM) proposed by Davis [20] to seek the relationships because it is the most relevant to this research as well as the most reliable from a theoretical point of view. TAM regards perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use (EOU) as major determinants of information systems (IS) usage. Based on

TAM, numerous studies have attempted to identify external factors that affected core TAM variables. Most of the studies, however, have been mainly focused on relatively simple systems such as email or ofce automation [5], [36], [38], [50], [52]. Recent studies dealing with the ERP system have focused on the internal managerial practices such as training [5], or have incorporated cultural (uncertainty avoidance) and cognitive (enjoyment) factors to TAM [37]. There has also been an attempt to relate product quality and organizational characteristics to ERP users cognitive responses [74]. But still, few have investigated different organizational contexts or considered the impact of socioenvironmental factor and external (consultant) support on users intention to accept the ERP system. With the increased complexity of IS associated with cross-functional business processes and multiple types of users involved, we expect that research on successful IS implementation would benet from extending TAM in a complex business application such as ERP system. We address the following three issues for this research. First, based on the literature review, we identify potential explanatory factors associated with successful ERP system implementation. Second, we develop a set of hypotheses to investigate the relationship between those factors and core TAM variables, that is, the perception and behavioral intention among users. Third, we test the hypotheses using multiple regression analyses and discuss the implications. This study extends the existing ERPrelated literature by integrating the context of project management with TAM in project-based sectors. This could be a stepping stone to validate the ERP success model across various organizational contexts. At the same time, practitioners would benet from this study by obtaining valuable insights into their managerial practices which enable them to improve users ERP system acceptance and utilization, and in the long run, to gain a competitive advantage in a fast-changing business environment. II. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND HYPOTHESES A. Users Acceptance and Utilization: Technology Acceptance Model One of the key indicators determining information systems success is the level of system usage which is reected in the technology acceptance by users [5], [22]. When investigating users acceptance and utilization of information systems, it is important to consider the work of Davis et al. [21]. Based on the theory of reasoned action [2], David et al. [21] proposed TAM which explains the relationship among users perception, attitudes, and behavioral intention to use new information systems. Specically, TAM describes that users perception affects their behavioral intention to use, and in the end, the behavioral intention leads individuals to the actual use of new information systems [21]. There are two fundamental propositions pertaining to TAM. First, behavioral intention to use information systems can be determined by two particular beliefs about the technology: perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived EOU. According to David et al. [21], PU refers to the prospective users subjective probability that using a specic application system will increase

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his or her job performance within an organizational context. Since improved performance is associated with various rewards such as incentives and promotions, PU serves as the trigger of technology acceptance behaviors [81]. Perceived EOU, dened as the degree to which the prospective user expects the target system to be free of effort, is also theorized to have an explanatory power of behavioral intention through the attitude toward using. The greater a users sense of efcacy, the more he/she is intrinsically motivated to use the system [10], [49]. Because EOU increases peoples level of self-efcacy [10], it can also be linked to the behavioral intention to use. The robustness of these relationships has been receiving empirical supports by numerous subsequent studies [79]. The other proposition is that these two beliefs mediate the relationship between the intention to use information systems and external variables. David et al. [21] suggested system features, training, documentation, and user support consultants as potential explanatory variables of EOU. Additionally, factors such as general computer self-efcacy [75], [76], level of education, job roles, and prior similar experiences [1], game-based training [78], shared belief and project communication [5], etc., had been proposed to inuence on PU or EOU [54]. As David et al. [21] stated, identifying external variables would make a contribution to the literature as they may have signicant implications of managerial interventions as well as individual differences. In addition to the original TAM variables, this study puts emphasis on a socioenvironmental factor as a potential determinant of PU and EOU because ERP is an organization-wide system that requires reengineering of current business processes involving multiple stakeholders. Therefore, we additionally include subjective norm as a determinant of technology acceptance on the basis of Venkatesh and Daviss [77] extended model. Subjective norm refers to a persons perception that most people who are important to him think he should or should not perform the behavior in question [27], [77]. While previous studies have reported inconsistent ndings on the role of social inuence process in the context of technology acceptance [21], [33], [40], [50], [52], [56], [71], [72], [79], Venkatesh et al. [77] empirically validated the signicant effect of subjective norm on PU and intention to use. Especially, subjective norm was found to be directly related to intention to use for mandatory usage context. Given the unique characteristics of ERP system of which organizations mandate the usage, it is reasonable to expect subjective norm to be signicantly related to the intention to use as well as PU. Note that we do not specify the direction of the relationship. The reason is that this relationship can be negative when negative social norm is prevalent in a group or an organization [67]. Subjective norm indicates the support and encouragement received by the end users from the peer community. The hypothesis related to subjective norm is based on social normative inuence and role of group norms. Social normative inuence is dened by Kelman [42] to be the inuence that is a species of compliance and is based on the need for approval, acceptance, or fear of reprisal, while group norm works in group context. Another social process important to technology acceptance that must be considered is identication and association with the

group. Kelman [42] dened identication as self-dening relationship a person has with another person or group. The inuence of this social identity on the decision maker must be considered. Bagozzi [8] indicated that decisions with regard to technology acceptance and actual usage are often made collaboratively or with an aim to how they t in with, or affect, other people or group requirements. The following are ve hypotheses proposing the relationships among behavioral intention, PU, perceived EOU, and subjective norm.
Hypothesis 1a: PU will be positively associated with behavioral intention to use ERP system. Hypothesis 1b: Perceived EOU will be positively associated with behavioral intention to use ERP system. Hypothesis 1c: Subjective norm will be signicantly associated with behavioral intention to use ERP system. Hypothesis 1d: Perceived EOU will be positively associated with PU. Hypothesis 1e: Subjective norm will be signicantly associated with PU.

B. External Variables: Critical Success Factors for ERP Projects 1) Internal Support: In this study, internal support encompasses three kinds of organizational intervention: 1) topmanagement support; 2) training; and 3) project planning. Topmanagement support has been identied as the most critical factor for achieving better project performance. The effect of topmanagement support on IS implementation success, however, has not been fully validated in the empirical analyses in terms of its signicance as well as its predictive power [29], [32], [45], [59]. Sharma and Yetton [61] explain the inconsistency using task interdependence which refers to the degree to which two or more activities interact to determine an outcome jointly. According to Sharma and Yetton [61], the effect of top-management support on user satisfaction is moderated by the level of task interdependence such that top-management support can be more effective in the context of higher task interdependence. As noted earlier, ERP system implementation increases the level of task dependence through coordinating all the resources, information, and functions of a business from shared data stores [24]. Furthermore, individuals receiving higher level of internal support while adopting ERP system would have stronger impression of the relevance of the system which is closely linked to PU [13]. Thus, it is reasonable to expect that management support would have a positive effect on PU. Amoako-Gyampah and Salam [5] and Marler et al. [54] also suggested that training is another form of organizational intervention which can facilitate technology acceptance among users. Since ERP system implementation involves considerable changes in organization-wide technology and business processes, supervisors as well as subordinates must be trained in order to fully utilize the system. The mediated relationship between training and intention to use is well explained by the work of Venkatesh and Davis [76]. Their analysis revealed that

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direct experience with a new system has a signicant effect on perceived EOU by changing users perceived self-efcacy [76]. For most of the users, training would be the rst experience with an ERP system. Thus, it is possible that training designed to improve users self-efcacy affects intention to use through changing their perceived EOU of the system. Training may also explain intention to use via PU [1], [43], [54]. Since training conveys information on the new system, it would be the rst experience and opportunity for users to compare the new system to currently used one, and to learn the value of the new system [1]. Thus, it is expected that training enables users to form the PU of the new system in relation to job relevance. That is to say, it is possible that training is positively related to PU. We can also argue the positive relationship between PU and project planning works in a similar manner as to the relationship between PU and top-management support. That is, when an ERP implementation project is well planned and progressed as originally planned, it is expected that users would have higher level of PU based on their perceived relevance of the system. Actually, Ferratt et al. [25] grouped top-management support, training, and project planning into internal support using factor analysis on the best practices (Cronbach = 0.89). Moreover, they reported that internal support is a strong determinant of project efciency which consists of change in informationintegration capabilities, change in information quality, change in process and product quality, change in competitive business performance, and overall satisfaction with the project outcome. Based on the previous discussion, we suggest that internal supports, as a whole, will be signicantly associated with ERP system implementation success. More specically, these relationship supports affect an individuals PU and perceived EOU, and subsequently, the perception determines an individuals intention to use. The following hypotheses test these relationships.
Hypothesis 2a: Internal support will have a positive relationship with PU. Hypothesis 2b: Internal support will have a positive relationship with perceived EOU.

2) Function: We dene function as the perceived degree of ERP systems functionality and its matching with an organizations necessary business processes [17], [25]. The importance of function in achieving ERP system implementation success has been well noted in the existing project management literature [15], [25], [34], [57], [65], [68], [73]. Generally, generic functionality of the ERP system cannot perfectly cover a specic organizational requirement. Thus, organizational adaption to the ERP system is indispensible in any case. Severe organizational mist, however, can be a critical failure factor as it is accompanied with great changes in business processes that result in implementation failure through users increased resistance against a new system [35]. Since the main target of this revolutionary process is end users, we thought that it was necessary to dispel users resistance and to increase their acceptance of a new system in order to achieve implementation success. Therefore, we developed the hypothesis that test the relationship between levels of function with users acceptance of the ERP system via PU.

When people make judgment about the technology acceptance, their decision is usually based on whether or not the technology has relevance to their job or a set of tasks [77]. According to the image theory proposed by Beach and Mitchell [11], [12], this judgment engages in a compatibility test and a protability test. A compatibility test involves screening process that eliminates incompatible options from further consideration. For example, if an individual judged the ERP system irrelevant to the tasks, he/she would eliminate the system from the acceptance. A protability test is the process of selecting the best option for better performance gains. In this context, an individual would accept the ERP system only when the system is judged to improve his/her performance most. Following these judgment processes, users cognitively assess whether or not the system would be useful for their tasks [77]. The judgment is important in the process of accepting ERP system because actual behaviors (system utilization) stem from the judgment about the t between the functionality of ERP system and organizational requirements. Various theories such as action theory, work motivation theory, and behavioral decision theory support this reasoning [77]. With respect to the relevance, many scholars have suggested similar concepts such as job-determined importance [48], tasktechnology t [31], cognitive t [80], job relevance [77], etc. Among them, the work of Venkatesh and Davis [77] is noteworthy. Drawing on image theory, Venkatesh and Davis [77] conceptualized a compatibility and protability test as the perception of job relevance and of output quality, respectively. According to them, job relevance refers to an individuals perception regarding the degree to which the target system is applicable to his or her jobs and output quality represents how well the system performs those jobs. Using these concepts, they empirically tested and validated the meditational effect of PU on the relationship between each of the perceptions and behavioral intention to use. Following the discussion so far, we posit that function will be positively associated with behavioral intention to use ERP system in a way that function positively affects PU which is a major determinant of behavioral intention to use as the following.
Hypothesis 3a: Function will be positively associated with PU.

3) Consultant Support: Final external variable employed in this study is consultant support which has also been identied as one of the critical factors for ERP implementation projects in previous studies [3], [17], [25], [28], [65]. Typically, ERP is classied into the most demanding type of innovations due to its complex and knowledge-intensive characteristics [44], [69]. With these characteristics, ERP implementation projects can be easily jeopardized due to severe knowledge asymmetry [58] and high knowledge barrier [7]. And the problem can be more serious when accompanied by the lack of in-house expertise [63]. For these reasons, scholars have argued that transfer of knowledge is important especially in the context of ERP [44], [64]. Indeed, it is known that rms spend a large portion of budget on using consultants (external experts) when implementing the ERP system [16]. Also, the SAP annual report states that the consulting service explains about 26% of its revenue [60].

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Hence, it seems that determining whether or not consultant support is signicant is especially relevant in the context of ERP system implementation. We dene consultant support as the perceived degree to which consultant support helps to make ERP implementation successful [17], [25]. This variable is different from training in terms of sustainability. That is, the goal of consultant support goes beyond the implementation success of a new system and encompasses ongoing operation, keeping up with changing technologies, etc. [44], whereas the purpose of training is enabling users to acquire basic skills at the initial stage [26]. As noted earlier, ERP system is a complex and knowledge-intensive system. Moreover, most of the users are non-IS specialists who lack technical knowledge [9]. Therefore, we can expect that consultant support enables these users to increase ability to adopt a new system [18] by lowering the knowledge barrier involved in the acceptance of a complex information system [7]. And in a similar vein to training which is expected to increase the perception of usefulness and to decrease the perception of efforts, it is possible to argue that consultant support would inuence those two constructs. We can nd the evidence supporting the relationship between consultant supports and IT implementation success in the work of Lacity and Willcocks [46] and Soh et al. [64]. In the study on the adoption of structured systems analysis (SSA) by individual system developers, Leonard-Barton [47] argued that perceived accessibility of consulting moderately discriminated adopters from nonadopters. Soh et al. [64] also reported that knowledge transfer from consultants to business users is a critical success factor for ERP implementation projects. These studies allow us to argue that consultant supports may facilitate the user acceptance of the ERP system. Compared to training, however, relatively less attention has been paid to consultant supports in the ERP-related literature as well as technology acceptance literature. Based on the discussion, we posit that PU and perceived EOU will have meditational effects on the positive relationship between consultant supports and the success of ERP system implementation. More specically, consultant supports will positively affect PU and perceived EOU, respectively. Based on the discussion, we developed the hypotheses as follows.
Hypothesis 4a: Consultant support will be positively associated with PU. Hypothesis 4b: Consultant support will be positively associated with perceived EOU.

Fig. 1.

Sample description.

veys during the period between May 14, 2007 and June 24, 2007 [16]. Initially, the questionnaires were emailed to a total of 2100 individuals; they were sent to 3000 individuals and 30% of them were bounced back. Subsequently, about 750 questionnaires were additionally distributed by 100 of top managements; vice presidents, senior managers, and IT managers had been contacted and requested to distribute the questionnaires from 5 to 10 subordinates in their organizations. Out of 2850 questionnaires distributed, 281 were returned with about 10% of response rate. We removed the respondents who had not provided the answers for the survey items measuring the seven variables of interest. As a result, a total of 254 responses had been used in the regression analyses. The characteristics of the respondents are as follows. 123 (48.4%) respondents were from the U.S., 122 (48.0%) were from South Korea, and the rest 9 (3.6%) came from countries other than those two. 107 (42.1%) respondents were using Oracle, 52 (20.5%) were using SAP, and 87 (34.3%) respondents were using a different system other than Oracle and SAP. 8 (3.1%) respondents did not answer to this question. As shown in Fig. 1, respondents are well distributed in terms of the year of experience in the construction industry. The average years of work experience in E&C industry was 13.9 years. Finally, respondents average hours of using ERP system was 13.5 h/week, and about 50% of respondents answered that they were using the system more than 6 h/week. B. Key Measures All the survey items were based on well-validated instruments in the existing studies. The items were also validated by the interviews with eld experts. All the items, which were developed by Chung [16], were measured using seven-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). The descriptive statistics and correlations of variables are presented in Table I and detailed information on the survey items is provided in Table II. 1) Intention to Use: To assess intention to use, a total of three items suggested by Venkatesh and Davis [77] were used.

III. RESEARCH MODEL AND APPROACH A. Research Setting, Sample, and Data Collection For this study, we set the Engineering and Construction (E&C) industry as a representative of project-based sectors. Thus, the population of interest is stakeholders of E&C companies who are currently using ERP systems in their working environment. To test the hypotheses, the target respondents were drawn from various construction-related sources such as trade magazines, E&C-related websites, ERP vendors website, etc. The data had been collected by both online and off-line sur-

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TABLE I MEAN, STANDARD DEVIATION, AND CORRELATIONS OF ALL SCALED VARIABLES

ables, internal support, consultant support, function, and perceived EOU. Finally, we conducted regression analysis between perceived EOU on internal support and consultant support. By analyzing each of these variables on the associated independent variables, we investigated which factor had signicant explanatory power of the dependent variables, given all the other factors in the model. IV. RESULTS A. Explaining Intention to Use Table III presents the inuence of PU, perceived EOU, and subjective norm on behavioral intention to use of the respondents. As we hypothesized, the relationships of PU and perceived EOU with behavioral intention to use were signicantly positive, and the effect of subjective norm on behavioral intention to use was signicantly different from zero (supporting hypotheses 1a, 1b, and 1c). Note that we did not hypothesize the relationship between behavioral intention to use and subjective norm as a positive one. As discussed earlier, this relationship can be negative when individuals perceive that top management, supervisors, or coworkers do not think the system to be useful. Specically, PU represented the strongest and positive association with behavioral intention to use ( = 0.53, p < 0.0001), showing a consistent result with numerous previous studies. Next determinant of intention to use was perceived EOU ( = 0.19, p < 0.001). It is interesting that subjective norm ( = 0.17, p < 0.01) also showed signicant relationship with behavioral intention to use because results from existing studies have reported inconsistent supports for this relationship. It reminded us of what Venkatesh and Davis [76] argued on the mandatory setting. We have elaborated this relationship in Section V. Finally, the r-square and adjusted r-square were 0.60 and 0.59, respectively, indicating that these three variables explained about 60% of the variance in intention to use. B. Explaining PU With respect to PU, we hypothesized that each of the external variables (hypotheses 2a, 3a, and 4a) as well as perceived EOU (Hypothesis 1d) would have unique positive effects on PU. Also, we theorized a signicant relationship between PU and subjective norm (Hypothesis 1e). Table IV shows the results on these relationships. All the variables except for consultant support showed signicant positive relationship with PU. Specically, we found that perceived EOU positively affect PU ( = 0.21) with the p-value less than 0.001, and subjective norm was signicantly related to PU ( = 0.20, p < 0.001). These results support hypotheses 1c and 1d. Meanwhile, function was found to have the strongest deterministic power of PU ( = 0.44, p < 0.0001; Table IV; supporting Hypothesis 3a), and the standardized coefcient associated with internal support was 0.12 with the p-value of 0.05 (Table IV; supporting Hypothesis 2a). However, consultant support did not show any signicant relationship with PU with alpha of 0.18. Finally, the r-square and adjusted r-square of this model were 0.60 and 0.59, respectively. Hence, we can state that

The items include assuming I have access to the ERP system, I intend to use it. Cronbachs alpha of this measure is 0.85. 2) PU: This measure was assessed using four kinds of items based on the works of Davis [20] and Venkatesh and Davis [77]. One of the items is using the ERP system improves my performance. These items show the highest reliability with Cronbachs alpha of 0.96. 3) Perceived EOU: A total of three items, derived from Davis [20] and Venkatesh and Davis [77], measured perceived EOU. An example item is my interaction with the ERP system is clear and understandable. These items are also recorded high reliability with the alpha statistics of 0.93. 4) Subjective Norm: Lucas and Spitlers [52] four items were employed in order to assess subjective norm. The items include I would like very much to use the ERP system because senior management thinks I should use it and I would like very much to use the ERP system because others in my work group think I should use it. Cronbachs alpha of this scale is 0.83. 5) Internal Support: This external variable was measured based on three items that were derived from the work of Ferratt et al. [25]. One of the items is Training for the ERP system was very helpful for me to understand and use it. This scale has relatively low reliability with Cronbachs alpha of 0.69. 6) Consultant Support: Two items that were also derived from Ferratt et al. [25] assessed this scale. They are I think consultants led us to a right direction during ERP implementation and I think consultants can help us to have a successful ERP implementation. Cronbachs alpha reliability is 0.75. 7) Function: Based on the work of Ferratt et al. [25], four items were developed to assess function. The items include the functionality of the ERP software our company is using is very good, the ERP system covers our necessary business functions very well, etc. The internal consistency of this scale is 0.90. C. Analysis Procedure The aforementioned hypotheses are tested using multiple regressions. As stated earlier, there are three variables to be explained in our model. First of all, intention to use was analyzed with PU, perceived EOU, and subjective norm. Next, we looked at the relationship between PU and a set of independent vari-

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TABLE II SURVEY ITEMS GIVEN TO ERP USERS IN THE CONSTRUCTION AND ENGINEERING FIRMS

TABLE III REGRESSION ANALYSIS ON INTENTION TO USE

TABLE IV REGRESSION ANALYSIS ON PU

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TABLE V REGRESSION ANALYSIS ON PERCEIVED EOU

Fig. 2.

Proposed model for ERP system implementation projects.

external variables with existing TAM variables explained about 60% of variance in PU. C. Explaining Perceived EOU We hypothesized that internal support and consultant support would, respectively, have positive effects on perceived EOU. According to the results in Table V, these two variables were having signicantly positive association with perceived EOU. In the case of internal support, it was associated with perceived EOU with the standardized b coefcient of 0.28 and p-value less than 0.0001 (supporting Hypothesis 2b). And we also observed that b coefcient characterizing the relationship between consultant support and perceived EOU was 0.33 with the signicance level less than 0.0001 (supporting Hypothesis 4b). The r-square and adjusted r-square were 0.28 and 0.27, respectively, implying the needs for additional variables that can be accounted for EOU perception in the information system acceptance. Fig. 2 summarizes the proposed model for the ERP system implementation project. V. DISCUSSIONS A. Key Findings and Managerial Implications The main purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of project management variables on ERP system implementa-

tion success from the perspective of user acceptance. Our key ndings are as follows. 1) Project-related variables (internal support and function) and organizational variables (subjective norm) are found to be potential determinants of user acceptance, while they were not included in the original technology acceptance model. 2) This empirical study of a complex and mandated information system also provides support for original TAM. The main constructs theorized in TAM are signicant in the context of ERP system. 3) We could not nd any signicant positive relationship between consultant support and PU. However, the result regarding consultant support provides us potential for future research. This study shows that the process of ERP implementation project and users acceptance should be managed simultaneously, not separately. Existing studies that addressed IS adoption have focused either on the implementation processes or on the user acceptance. For this reason, critical success factors identied in the literature merely reected the perspectives of senior managers or IT professionals involved in the implementation projects. In addition, organizational factors have received relatively less attention than cognitive factors in the literature that attempted to extend TAM. As found in our results, however, project-related variables that had been selected based on critical success factors for ERP implementation projects (or large-scale projects) have signicant impacts on users PU, perceived EOU, and in the end, the intention to use the system. We believe that this study would provide a basic mechanism for predicting successful ERP implementation from multidimensional perspectives. In addition, reported key ndings provide additional evidence to the validity of TAM in a complex and mandatory context. In the existing literature, some scholars argued that TAM is not valid in mandatory [54] or eld [52] settings, whereas others such as Amoako-Gyampah and Salam [5] provide supports for TAM even in the ERP context. For these reasons, it was difcult to reconcile the validity of TAM in terms of the signicance or explanatory power. However, the ERP success model proposed here validated that the belief constructs (i.e., PU and perceived EOU) were not only signicant but also having similar level of explanatory power to the original TAM. It implies that how enthusiastically or willingly users adopt the innovation in their working processes is still important, even when organizations mandate the system usage. We recommend senior managers to

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keep this in mind and to endeavor to comprehend end-users expectations for ERP systems. Other than the original TAM variables, our study also found that function and subjective norm had relatively greater impacts on PU which was the strongest determinant of the intention to use. Hence, decision makers should make their best efforts to dene the companies necessary business functions and to choose the right modules that are well tted in terms of functionality. Meanwhile, the signicant role of subjective norm in our model revalidated the nding of Venkatesh and Davis [77] that emphasized this relationship in the context of mandatory setting. This result says that users pay more attention to organizational atmosphere when new system acceptance is mandated. This, in turn, implies the possibility that users might be reluctant to accept ERP systems if negative opinions on ERP systems are prevalent in the organizations. Our suggestion for practitioners is that they should encourage every member in their organization to use newly implemented ERP system. This might be the notion where the importance of internal support can come into play. Finally, it seems appropriate to address the results associated with the consultant support. It was originally hypothesized to have a signicantly positive contribution toward users behavioral intention to use in ways that it positively affected PU and perceived EOU, respectively. With respect to perceived EOU, we could accept our research hypothesis. In the case of PU, however, the result could not satisfy our hypothesis with the directionality as well as the signicance. One possible implication is that consultants deliver the knowledge on the mechanics without convincing potential end users the need to accept the ERP system. Or, it may imply the unit-of-analysis issue. That is, the role of consultant support might vary according to groups or organizations rather than to individuals. Our reasoning is based on the mechanism of knowledge transfer which starts from outside consultants to small number of client representatives and then, the representatives are serving as trainers for the majority of users [44]. The investigation of its role would be one of the meaningful topics in future research because it is expected to have the greatest potential, but it has been earning the least attention in the ERP literature [25]. B. Research Limitations Some limitations of this research are also worth noting for future research. First, low response rate and/or missing values might prevent us from obtaining hypothesized results. For example, the response rate for the variable consultant support was only 82% as noted earlier. One possible reason is that respondents who had not involved in the implementation project or those who had relatively short working experience in their current organizations might merely have limited information on this construct. This might lead respondents reluctant to answer this question. This study lacks the rigor of distinguishing the respondents in the sampling process. Next, there are additional limitations associated with the way that the data were collected. As stated in methods Section III-A, most of the questionnaires were distributed via email.

Thus, some individuals might consider this type of emails as spam and delete them without checking [6]. Moreover, there could be some organizations that originally blocked emails from an outside server. Since these cases might cause nonresponse bias that could not fully represent our target population, the results must be interpreted and applied with caution [84]. Finally, even though we focused on the individual acceptance of new information system, there is a possibility that individuallevel intentions and perceptions may systematically vary according to higher level characteristics such organizational or national culture. Besides, we did not explicitly measure potential contingency variable(s) such as task interdependency or computer self-efcacy, while implicitly considered them based on extensive literature review. We believe that the consideration of those characteristics would enable us to better understand the mechanism of successful ERP implementation and to reach more meaningful conclusion. VI. FUTURE RESEARCH One of the key ndings from this research is that function dened as the functionality of ERP system and its matching the companys necessary business function, is the strongest determinant of PU. It implies that users still want systems to be customized rather than their business processes to be changed. ERP vendors, however, suggest that full package implementation as well as minimal customization is the best way to maximize the benets from ERP system. This argument raises various research questions such as: 1) are there real differences associated with implementation approaches; 2) which are the modules to be necessarily included and which are not; 3) what is the optimal degrees of customization; 4) what are the difculties associated with customization and how serious are they; and so on. Meanwhile, DeLone and McLean [22] suggested that information system success should be considered from multidimensional perspectives. Our study focused only on the user acceptance as a success measure. To extend this study, however, future research should evaluate ERP project success from various perspectives. It is especially relevant in ERP study because ERP system implementation is associated with complex set of project outcomes [25]. Other measures such as the efciency of information management seem to be interesting. Integrating qualitative and quantitative measures (i.e., user acceptance and project cost/schedule performance indices) can be another interesting option. We should note that the endeavor to assess various aspects of ERP success must be accompanied with more sophisticated research designs and analytical methods. Finally, future research can empirically investigate the relationship between individuals ERP acceptance and changes in performance. Related research questions would be is the task performance of an individual/a group improved after adopting ERP system, did the ERP system add values to an organization in terms of business performance, etc. In the cases of addressing the group or organization level performance, researchers would benet from employing hierarchical or longitudinal analysis that allows them to capture the inuence of individual level acceptance on higher level outcome over time.

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Young Hoon Kwak received the B.S. degree from Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in engineering and project management from the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently an Associate Professor of Project Management in the Department of Decision Sciences, The George Washington Universitys School of Business, Washington, DC. He was a Visiting Engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Florida International University, and a Visiting Scholar at the IPA Institute. He has consulted worldwide and presented and published more than 80 articles in journals, books, book chapters, magazines, and conference proceedings. His scholarly works appear in California Management Review, IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT, IEEE ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT REVIEW, Technovation: The International Journal of Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Technology Management, International Journal of Project Management, Project Management Journal, International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, Risk Management: An International Journal, Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, Journal of Management in Engineering, Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering, Korean Management Review, and other research outlets. His primary research interests include strategic issues of project management, project control, project performance improvement, management of technology, and engineering, construction, and infrastructure project management. Dr. Kwak currently serves as a Specialty Editor (Associate Editor) for the case studies section of the Journal of Construction Engineering and Management (ASCE) and on the editorial board for the International Journal of Project Management (Elsevier), the Project Management Journal (Wiley), the Journal of Management in Engineering (ASCE), and the International Journal of Managing Projects in Business (Emerald). He is a four-time recipient of research grants sponsored by the Project Management Institute (PMI), and a two-time recipient of the IBM Center for The Business of Governments research stipend. His research titled Impact on Project Management of Allied Disciplines received the 2008 International Project Management Association (IPMA) Outstanding Research Contributions Award. He currently serves as a Principal Investigator of a PMI research grant to conduct a study on Global Perspectives on Project, Program, and Portfolio Management in Government.

Jane Park received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in urban planning and engineering from Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea. She is currently working toward the Doctorate degree at The George Washington Universitys School of Business, Washington, DC. During the masters study, she was a Research Assistant and was involved in several research projects including an exploration of urban spatial structural change and the strategic development of spatial decision support system. For the doctoral research, she is investigating the critical success factors for largescale infrastructure projects by identifying the explanatory factors that have signicant effect on their cost, schedule, and performance. Her goal is to develop a strategic roadmap for the reinvestment of failing infrastructures by incorporating sustainability issues with project management for successful planning, implementation, and management of future capital projects.

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Boo Young Chung received the B.S. and M.S. degrees from Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, the M.S. degree in construction engineering and management from Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, and the Ph.D. degree in project management from the University of Maryland, College Park. He is currently a Principal Engineer at the Smart City Development Group, Samsung SDS Co., Ltd., Seoul, Korea. He had worked for the construction industry for more than ve years before receiving the M.S. degree from Purdue University. He was a Principal Researcher at Jeonin, Inc., which is one of the top construction management companies in Korea before joining Samsung SDS. He has several scholarly publications in the area of strategic issues in project management, construction engineering and management, and information systems management. His publications appear at the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT, Automation in Construction, Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering, and others. Dr. Chung is an elected member of the Construction Research Council of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Saumyendu Ghosh (SM03) received the Bachelors degree from the Calcutta University, Kolkata, India, the Masters in Statistics degree from the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, India, and the M.Eng. degree in project management from the University of Maryland, College Park. He has held a number of ERP and CRM project management positions in the commercial sector and has implemented ERP applications in 22 different countries in the world. He also teaches global project management and project governance at the A. J. Clark School of Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, and School of Business, The George Washington University, Washington, DC, as an Adjunct Faculty. His research interests include project governance for complex enterprise transforming IT projects. Dr. Ghosh has been the Governor of the IEEE Engineering Management Society since 2007.