Mindful IT adoption : making the right strategic decisions by knowing why and how to adopt enterprise systems

Corporate investment in enterprise level IT systems has been characterised by high rates of failure. The paper presents a knowledge based perspective to examine how firms adopt and implement enterprise systems in order to better understand how organisations can achieve reliable outcomes from such investments. The case presented explores the key decision stages of a major ERP investment, focusing on the strategic reasoning behind each decision. Particular attention is directed to the relationship between adoption know-why and implementation know-how to assess whether managers have been mindful or mindless in their investment decisions.