The case of Ivy has a number of important theoretical
and practical implications for our understanding of how
accounting and information architectures are linked. From
a theoretical perspective, our research demonstrates the
applicability of the sociomateriality perspective for ERP
systems in terms of explaining the links between accounting
and information system development more generally.
The resistance to the ERP system was instigated by individuals
responsible for management accounting functions.
We argue therefore that the sociomateriality perspective
offers a suitable lens for exploring the links between management
accounting practices and ERP systems because
the nature of management accounting is such that it must
be determined by managers’ local practice needs. Thus, it
needs to be far more flexible than its financial accounting
counterparts, which may face fewer problems in terms of
expressing the parameters of a function by making reference
to accounting standards or regulations and thus
capable of working using an end-user model. Put another
way, it may not be as easy to program management
accounting practices thus many of the design decisions
regarding the logics occur ex ante to the initial time when
the ERP architecture is designed. It is interesting to see
that this was the case even in the situation where the ERP
architecture was being designed for the specific university.
In other cases, where they are adopting a standard package,
not trying to design an industry-specific package, this
post-roll-out design modification may be even more likely
in relation to the management accounting functionality.
That being said, an important contribution of this study
is to show that such post-roll-out design modification is
neither as difficult as Dechow and Mouritsen (2005) indicate
when they state that the accounting structure is ‘only
plastic in the pre-practice project mode’ (i.e., before implementation),
nor as easy as Quattrone and Hopper (2006)
indicate with their concept of ‘heteromogeneous’. Rather,
our analysis demonstrates that the scope of post-rollout
modification (the practices which get accommodated
and those which do not) and the type of such modification
(reconfigurations versus supplements) depends not on
either the people involved (as social constructionists would
emphasize) or features of the technology (as realists would
emphasize) but rather on the sociomaterial assemblage.
Thus, the technology may be customable but if there are
no experts to undertake customizations, the package may
as well be non-plastic so that only supplements (adaptations
around) can be made. And, even if the package is
customable and experts are on-hand, not all practice communities
will be able to get the design changes that they
request. Only selective accommodations were made at Ivy
and these were made where the resistance was coming
from powerful sources that ‘had to be listened to’. The social
and material actors that make up a particular assemblage,
in other words, are not all equal, something that is often
ignored in the literature. Moreover, our findings also indicate
that the process of accounting change may not always
be best characterized as ‘relational drifting’ as emphasized
by Andon et al. (2007). In a situation where the practices
of a powerful community are ignored in the ERP configuration,
experimentation may actually be rather minimal,
and instead the modifications that are introduced may reinforce
legacy practices.
Following on from this point, the case study results also
provide valuable insights into how legacy accounting systems
can continue to operate at the margins when new
systems are introduced and may become central to the
workability of these systems when staff fail to accept them.
This is different from other accounting studies, such as
Hyvönen et al. (2008) which demonstrate instances where
ERP systems are initially designed to mirror the prevailing
practices rather than being seen as an opportunity
to develop and implement a more sophisticated form of
accounting. In Ivy, the ERP was designed specifically to try
and enforce a more sophisticated, or as the VP of Finance
saw it, a more ‘professional’ form of accounting. The result,
however, was virtually opposite to what was being sought
by the centre, with the backlash from faculty reinstating
and indeed reinforcing their legacy accounting practices
that were now part of the formal systems. This emphasizes
that it is important to look not simply at what is intended
when introducing ERP-type systems but also to examine
how the system is configured and then subsequently reconfigured
and supplemented.
The Ivy case also highlights that even when an ERP is
designed to mirror prevailing practices (whether immediately
or through a post-roll-out modification) it is