Organizational Theory

Why CIOs Get Fired After ERP Implementation

When ERP implementations fail, the postmortem always says the software was fine and the change management was missing. That phrase hides what actually happened: the organization lacked the political will to standardize processes.

2026-05-14 · 6 min read Organizational TheoryPlatforms & EcosystemsSociotechnical Systems
ErpPart 2 of 3
Erp Failure Structur2Erp Implementations

verification:
claims_checked:
- "Hershey's $112M SAP failure 1999 Halloween" - widely reported industry case, exact figure of $112M from business press coverage of the period
- "Nike $100M-$400M i2 SCM disaster 2000" - widely reported; $100M in disclosed lost revenue, up to $400M including stock impact
- "Levi Strauss ERP write-off" - widely reported industry case
- "DeSanctis and Poole 1994 AST: structural features, spirit, faithful/unfaithful appropriation" - verified at day1.html lines 1120, 1208, 1224, 1285, 1302
- "Markus and Robey 1988 emergent perspective almost always correct" - verified at day1.html lines 401, 594, 1282
- "ERP requires process standardization, organizations resist due to local autonomy and identity" - grounded in AST appropriation logic and institutional theory from day1.html Topic 8
- "Sociotechnical axis (Sarker et al. 2019) Type IV true sociotechnical interaction" - verified at day1.html lines 236-237
claims_unverified:
- "Hershey's timeline: four years compressed to thirty months" - from business press memory; not verified against a primary source file in this check
- "Nike i2 forecasting parameters configured for old stable-demand model" - from business press analysis; not verified against primary Nike documentation
sources_used:
- "/Users/alisafari/Downloads/PHD/UNT/2026/COMPS/study-hub/day1.html" (Topic 8 structuration/AST section, Topic 1 theory/causal structure section)
- "/Users/alisafari/Downloads/PHD/UNT/2026/COMPS/study-hub/oral.html" (Markus & Robey variance vs process, ERP example)
word_count: 1150
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About the author

A
Ali Safari
PhD Student in IS, University of North Texas

Researching AI governance, trust in intelligent systems, and agentic AI. Writing while studying for comps.

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