Organising digital innovation in ERP platforms
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Date
31/07/2021Author
Neves da Rocha, Fábio
Metadata
Abstract
Recently, established enterprise technology vendors (such as Oracle and SAP)
have been remaking their enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems as
‘platforms’ that herald in new technologies capable of transforming mainstream
organising logics and, apparently, making organisations ‘intelligent.’ However,
scholars studying digital platforms are yet to capture this change. The literature
has discussed how digital platforms are transforming the way organisations
innovate and compete but, thus far, studies have developed a rather partial
understanding of digital platforms and their role in digital innovation. The bulk of
the literature seems to focus mostly on consumer-oriented platforms (e.g., Apple
and Google) in business-to-consumer (B2C) markets, thus leaving the important
nuances of innovation dynamics surrounding the building of enterprise platforms
unexplored as well as their potential for reshaping organisations.
Combining Information Systems (IS) perspective with insights from Science and
Technology Studies (STS), this thesis offers a sociotechnical, longitudinal, multi-perspective and multi-spatial approach, which contrasts with the narrow,
snapshot studies that portray digital innovation as a technology-oriented
phenomenon from a singular vantage point in time and space. Drawing on
qualitative data, the research includes three empirical studies, each with a
different perspective – the digital platform, the platform ecosystem and the
platform markets – that depict struggles, asymmetries and challenges in the
relationship between a global ERP vendor and multiple actors participating in
innovation development and adoption. Together, these studies present a deeper
understanding of how a major digital innovation emerges and unfolds and what
complexities are involved in this trajectory; how third-party innovation is
orchestrated and what processes and mechanisms constitute this orchestration;
and how innovation visions are created and shaped, highlighting details of the
sociotechnical arrangements that connect actors, processes and artefacts
towards innovation adoption.
Answering demands for a holistic approach in digital platform studies, this thesis’
main contribution is to articulate a comprehensive view of how digital innovation
is organised in ERP platforms. This research enhances digital innovation
knowledge in three aspects. First, it advances the understanding of digital
innovation processes. While the extant platform literature studies isolated
processes, this study brings an investigation of their simultaneous occurrence,
providing different insights about their dynamics. Second, this thesis goes a step
further in the comprehension of innovation coordination. Scholars have
described several mechanisms that are put in place to orchestrate third-party
innovation, and this investigation builds on them to show how the orchestration
occurs. Finally, this research draws attention to a different aspect of innovation
adoption. The digital platform literature has not looked at the antecedents of
innovation adoption, i.e., innovation visions, which here are depicted in detail
from their emergence to their articulation in the market.