Enterprise resource-planning systems adoption in Bahrain: motives, benefits, and barriers

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to provide better understanding of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems adoption, as well as non-adoption practices in a less developed country setting, namely Bahrain. Design/methodology/approach - A survey method was employed to elicit opinions from IT executives from two types of companies: those which adopted ERP systems and those which so far have not. Findings - The study highlighted the benefits, motives and barriers of implementing such systems. Moreover, for those which have not experienced these practices before, it investigated the reasons behind not implementing these systems, executives' attitudes, and future intentions towards these systems. Implications and insights for businesses, ERP systems' vendors, educators, and researchers have been discussed based on the results of the survey. Originality/value - This study extends research efforts concerning the adoption of ERP systems to include strategic and decision-making aspects of evaluation, which have not had appropriate attention from past research. It explores connections between these two aspects with other classical ones such as operational and technical dimensions of evaluation. Responding to repetitive research calls for appropriately scrutinizing adoption practices of this technology in different countries especially developing ones - the paper presents the results of a survey of ERP systems adoption in Bahrain.