Journal of Enterprise Information Management

Purpose – The main purpose of this paper is to discuss whether an enterprise system (ES) is a part of an organization's administrative paradox. The paper aims to question which role the ES has in organizing, focusing aspects of flexibility and stability.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper is a qualitative, longitudinal, case study of how an ES maintains, and even reinforces, existing administrative organizational structures. The theoretical lens used is mainly structuration theory.

Findings – An ES can take the part of an organization's administrative paradox. An administrative paradox is two sides of the same coin when coordinating organizations – the concurrent striving for flexibility and stability. The studied ES even centralizes control, creates norms, and enhances power for actors in positions of authority (top management). Because of its structure and configuration the ES is a powerful tool to coordinate. The ES is considered to be organizationally ungainly, but at the same time indispensable.

Practical implications – The paper provides valuable insights on how the studied organizations try to deal with standardization/stability and flexibility that can be valuable for other system users or implementers to learn from, as well as the analysis as a whole.

Originality/value – The paper combines structuration theory and theories covering the administrative paradox and aspects of coordination in order to analyze and discuss the implementation and use of an ES.