Abstract

Enterprise Systems (ES) / Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems implementations have been widely popular with organisations in the past century with revenues of 37.5 billion USD in 2008 (AMR, 2009). Empowerment of users is one of commonly cited benefits of ES usage. However, literature review suggests a paradoxical situation exists with the empowerment of users via the use of IT. Various researchers have attempted to address the panoptical control and empowerment controversy by attempting to explain the impact on managers and users. However, to ensure the success of ES implementation and use, it is idealistic to achieve an optimised balance for the organization to impose control on the use of IT i.e. Enterprise Systems and the empowerment benefits of IT. This study guided by the lens of panopticon control attempts to investigate the impact of empowerment and panoptical control on varying levels of users including management and the factors that assist in optimising both control and empowerment.

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