An Examination Of The Resonance Between The Self-Propagating Function Of ERP And Its Co-Evolutional Impact As A Source Of Maximum Firm Utilization Of The Potential Benefits Of It | Masayo Hobo & Chihiro Watanabe

As Japan has experienced a vicious cycle between non-elastic institutions and insufficient utilization of the potential benefits of information technology (IT), a dramatic deployment of i-mode service (NTT DoCoMo?s mobile Internet access service) in the late 1990s provides encouragement that the nation?s institutional systems can effectively stimulate the self-propagating nature of IT through dynamic interaction with it. In addition, while the deployment of i-mode service has been initiated by non-organizational initiatives, the advancement of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software in constructing a self-propagating interaction between ERP firms and their customers demonstrates that a similar expectation can also be initiated by organizational initiatives. Provided that the dramatic deployment of i-mode service can be attributed to a resonance between ?an institutional spiral trajectory? initiated by non-organizational initiatives based on learning experiences from previous services and an IT driven self-propagating trajectory, a similar resonance between a self- propagating interaction between ERP firms and their customers and customer co-evolutional interaction with non-organizational customers (consumers) is expected to lead to maximum utilization of the potential benefits of IT by organizational initiatives. This paper, on the basis of an empirical analysis of resonance in ERP utilization, attempts to demonstrate the above hypothesis and identify the structural sources that enable effective utilization of the potential benefits of IT by organizational initiatives.