Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to present the choices to researchers when approaching the topic of enterprise systems from a social science perspective. Design/methodology/approach -A selected bibliography is presented, on the themes relevant to methodological choices in studying enterprise systems in an organisational context. The themes encompass epistemology, causality, research approach and type of data, research design, researcher role in data collection, research strategy, method, techniques and researcher role in relation to the setting. Findings -The paper presents theoretical approaches and illustrates the application of theory on the specific case of enterprise system implementation in an organisational context. Research limitations/implications -A breadth of themes is considered here, however the review of the literature is not exhaustive, but selective. Practical implications -The paper argues for making research method explicit and transparent and for greater awareness of the researchers studying enterprise systems of the methodological choices available when engaging with the subject of study. Originality/value -The paper brings together available and well-developed research methods, mainly used in information systems (IS) research and organisation studies, and which have been used in enterprise systems somewhat sparsely and without particular transparency, closer to research practice.

The redistribution of risk across social groups is an important aspect of risk analysis. This article argues for a more general concept of risk redistribution across any significant categorisation, however, not just social groups. This includes the redistribution of risk across different kinds of harm, different kinds of failure mode and so on. These redistributions are connected by the way in which they all somehow threaten coping capacities that are adapted to specific past distributions: for example redistributions across failure modes threaten technological and organisational risk controls, whereas redistributions across social groups can threaten notions of fairness and social order. The purpose of the study described here was to investigate this general concept of risk redistribution as a managerial problem. It involved interviews with regulatory and consultancy staff, predominantly in offshore, maritime and railroad operations. These indicated that redistribution was a ubiquitous outcome of activity -and not one confined to discontinuous changes in technology or organisation. Yet, the management of this redistribution was not strongly institutionalised. It was mostly not embodied as an important concept in regulations, codes and procedures and it was not a product of risk assessment processes. But there was a considerable sensitivity to how both technological change and the practice of risk management itself produced redistributions, and extensive efforts were often made to deal with them in the informal domain.

This paper explores the processes that occur during the implementation of an enterprise system (ES). It seeks to identify the most prevalent and/or that which has the most impact on the implementation. Data was collected through a case study of a SAP implementation on the UK site of an international durables manufacturing company. The research questions focus on the method for capturing and analysing process related data, as well as on what the actual processes are. Communication was found to be the most prevalent of processes highlighted by the interviewees. The implications for research and practice are discussed and directions for further research suggested.