Not because they are new: Developing the contribution of enterprise resource planning systems to management control research

Enterprise Resource Planning systems are fundamentally bound up with the work of accounting, and have been seen to have transformative implications for the nature of organisational integration and control. This introductory essay briefly outlines the nature of Enterprise Resource Planning systems, noting the main lines of argument in their treatment in the accounting literature so far. It goes on to set the scene for the distinctive contribution of the two papers that follow, exphasising the way in which they offer a basis for re-evaluating our understanding of organisational integration and control through their detailed field work.