Reexamining Critical Success Factors for Enterprise System Adoption in Transition Economies: Learning from Polish Adopters

Abstract

This study's goal is to investigate and better understand critical success factors (CSFs) for enterprise system (ES) adoption in transition economies. The research setting embraces ES adoptions conducted in Poland, a transition economy from Central and Eastern Europe. On the basis of research conducted among 144 ES adopters, an analysis based on grounded theory revealed 20 CSFs grouped into 4 categories. Next, a stakeholder analysis of the discovered CSFs has been performed. The achieved results were compared with the findings of prior research conducted in developed and developing economies. The main results imply that the most important CSFs for ES adoption in Poland are connected with people playing varied roles in the implementation project. The findings also suggest that people-related considerations will replace finance- and IT-related issues in the future. Other hypothesized trends include a growing importance of tangible benefits and organizational changes in transition economies.

Keywords:

• critical success factors
• enterprise system adoption
• stakeholder analysis
• transition economy
• Poland

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor

Piotr Soja is associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at the Cracow University of Economics (CUE), Poland. He holds a postdoctoral degree (habilitation) and Ph.D. in economics from CUE. He also holds an M.B.A. from the School of Entrepreneurship and Management at CUE in association with the University of Teeside, UK. He has over eight years of experience in industry as an ERP consultant, system analyst and software developer. His research interests include enterprise systems adoption, ICT for development, and inter-organizational integration. Piotr has published in Enterprise Information Systems, Industrial Management & Data Systems, Information Systems Management, and Information Technology for Development, among many other journals, as well as in numerous conference proceedings such as AMCIS, HICSS, ICEIS, and ISD. He is currently member of the Editorial Board of AIS Transactions on Enterprise Systems, Information Technology for Development and Journal of Accounting and Management Information Systems. He has acted as Program Committee member in numerous international conferences, including ECIME, ISD, EuroSymposium, and ICTM. Since 2009, Piotr has served as mini-track chair for AMCIS conferences in the area of enterprise system adoption and ICT in developing/transition economies.

Additional information

Funding

This research has been financed by the funds granted to the Faculty of Management, Cracow University of Economics, Poland, within the subsidy for maintaining research potential.