How Technology Use Drives Infobesity: An In-Depth Look at ERP Systems

Enterprise systems are a double-edged sword for organizations. The positive impact of implementing these systems on the firm’s performance has been widely researched. However, enterprise systems cannot be commended as the silver bullet for improving the firm’s business operations. Past literature has identified that enterprise systems can reduce flexibility and increase rigidity within the organization. In this paper, we posit that enterprise systems are one of the biggest sources of infobesity in organizations. We use a research design that integrates inductive analytics and abductive discovery to uncover the interaction of multi-level antecedents of infobesity in organizations. Our findings reveal that a greater cumulative use of ERP and SCM systems exposes firms to a high degree of infobesity. These findings reveal that enterprise systems further complicate the already increasingly complex information environment of the organization. We ultimately discuss the implications of our findings on the firm’s innovation activity.