5th International Seminar on MANUFACTURING ACCOUNTING RESEARCH ANALYSIS OF THE EFFECTS OF ERP SYSTEMS IN ACCOUNTING ORGANIZATION

ERP – Enterprise Resources Planning is a concept broadly diffused to people and organizations since when it was coined by Gartner Group in early 1990 as the next-generation of MRP II (Keller). Very soon it became the symbol of a revolutionary change in the mode of operating company processes. Later, it was considered the solution for those organizations pressured by the year 2000 bug. Thousands of companies in the world have implemented ERP and continue to live with it. It is widely recognized that a reasonable portion of companies was able to make the plenitude of benefits, while others just obtained the basic level. In any case, the ERP has changed forever the way these companies were operating. Until now these changes are not quite well studied and understood, including the accounting organization. Empirical researches are necessary as to acquire deeper understanding of the implications of ERP systems for accounting and for the accountant’s function and its integration with other areas of the company. This paper describes an empirical qualitative research performed with accountants of companies using ERP in Brazil. The theoretical concepts of organizational changes caused by implementation of AIS – Accounting Information Systems were used as in Markus (1983). Multiple case studies (YIN) with accountants revealed that they were key people in the implementation program. As in Ezzamel(1999), accountant’s power changes was analyzed based on Foucault theories of power structure.