What makes "the System" tick? - Explaining Individuals' Adaptation Behavior towards Effective Use in Enterprise System Implementations

Over the last three decades, research on adoption, implementation, and use of information technology in organizations such as technology acceptance has undoubtedly provided for valuable and important insights. However, there is still a lack of understanding of users’ responses to new IT, their adaptation behaviors and associated outcomes such as effective use in organizations. With a critical realist case study and new conceptualization of individuals’ adaptation behavior, we studied an Enterprise System (ES) implementation in work systems of a financial services provider. We found evidence for four generic adaptation modes as response to the ES implementation that are based on mechanisms of exploration or exploitation of knowledge, communication and structures of the ES. These modes can be instantiated differently by each individual, leading to different adaptation patterns that drive effective use and work system assimilation and thus can influence benefits from ES.