Misalignments in ERP Implementation: A Dialectic Perspective Christina Soh Siew Kien Sia Wai Fong Boh May Tang Nanyang Business School Nanyang Technological University Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are often not fully aligned with the imple- menting organization. It is important to understand their sources of misalignments because they can have significant implications for the organization. From a dialectic perspective, such misalignments are the result of opposing forces that arise from structures embedded in the ERP package and the organization. An intensive case study was conducted in one organization that has experienced significant misalignments with its ERP implementation. A typology of the misalign- ments and four pairs of dialectic forces were identified. Articulating deeper structural level misalignments enables organizations to examine their assumptions about the “permanent” characteristics of the organization and helps misalignments surface early to aid planning for resolution strategies. 1. INTRODUCTION Organizations implementing enterprise resource planning (ERP) packages (or any other large-scale package) will find gaps between organizational requirements and package features. These gaps require the organization to decide whether to cus- tomize the package or to change organizational practices to fit the package. ERP vendors and consultants strongly advocate adoption of the package with minimal customization for a variety of reasons (Brehm, Heinzl, & Markus, 2000): to mini- mize implementation risk, reduce implementation cost, avoid negative impacts on system performance, facilitate adoption of future package upgrades, reduce main- tenance costs, and foster adoption of process-oriented “best practices.” Organiza- tional users, however, often demand to have the ERP package customized to meet INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMAN–COMPUTER INTERACTION, 16(1), 81–100 Copyright © 2003, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Requests for reprints should be sent to Christina Soh, Information Management Research Center, Nanyang Business School, Nanyang Technological University, Nanyang Avenue, Singapore 639798. E-mail: Acsoh@ntu.edu.sg