Ontological Analysis of An ERP Implementation Success and Education: A Critical System Thinking Approach

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementations are plagued by high failure rates. Extant literature has proposed a myriad of critical success factors that contribute to successful ERP implementations, but there is still a gap in understanding the interaction of the complex internal subsystems that play a role in such successes. This study presents an ontological analysis of several subsystems and their interaction at the GCSS-Army ERP implementation. It leverages the system thinking theory and a novel analogous example to explain the interactions and properties of these subsystems.