ERP and precautionary ethics: harnessing critical thinking to engender sustainability
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JICES-12-2012-0020 |
| Date | 17 May 2013 |
| Published date | 17 May 2013 |
| Pages | 92-111 |
| Author | Kala Saravanamuthu,Carole Brooke,Michael Gaffikin |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management |
ERP and precautionary ethics:
harnessing critical thinking to
engender sustainability
Kala Saravanamuthu
Newcastle Business School, Faculty of Business and Law,
University of Newcastle, Callaghan, Australia
Carole Brooke
Warwick Manufacturing Group, International Management Centre,
University of Warwick, Coventry, UK, and
Michael Gaffikin
School of Accounting and Finance, University of Wollongong,
Wollongong, Australia
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review critical emancipatory literature to identify a
discourse that could be used to successfully customise generic Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
systems to particular user-needs. The customisation exercise is posited in the context of contemporary
society, which has to try to become more sustainable amidst uncertainty about the complex
interrelationships between elements of the ecosystem. It raises new challenges for the customisation
exercise, that of fostering the precautionary ethos and engaging realistically with complexity and
uncertainty inherent in emergent knowledge about ecological resilience.
Design/methodology/approach – This is a conceptual paper that draws on published research
papers to tease out political constructs which are vital for facilitating sustainable decisions.
Findings – This paper argues that the critical emancipatory influence on systems design has
generated attempts to formulate socio-ethical information systems. However, these systems are limited
by their inability to engage with the politics of asymmetrical distribution of power, even though
these systems rely on bottom-up participation to change the status quo. Hence, it is suggested that
systems design should learn from Gandhi’s experiences in mobilising social reform to instil a
precautionary ethos in the context of asymmetrical power relations. The discourse used to customise
ERP should facilitate social learning about ecological resilience as it affects the capacity to reform in
the interest of sustainable outcomes. It is proposed that the discourse be socially constructed on the
vocabulary of integrated risk because it would enable management to take advantage of lived
experiences and enhance the organisation’s capacity to learn about formulating sustainable business
practices.
Practical implications – The recommended approach to identifying user-needs (in customising
ERP) is based on Gandhi’s tried-and-tested approaches of mobilising bottom-up participation in social
reform.
Originality/value – This paper brings in Eastern philosophy (namely Advaitic thinking) into the
predominately Western-dominated systems design arena. Its value lies in its practical applicability to
real-world design challenges.
Keywords Enterprise resourceplanning, Resource management,Customization,
Sustainabledevelopment, Ethics, Gandhi, Emancipatory,Participatory
Paper type Research paper
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/1477-996X.htm
Received 5 December 2012
Revised 4 February 2013
18 February 2013
Accepted 3 March 2013
Journal of Information,
Communication and Ethics in Society
Vol. 11 No. 2, 2013
pp. 92-111
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
1477-996X
DOI 10.1108/JICES-12-2012-0020
JICES
11,2
92
1. Introduction
Contemporary society has to find ways to develop sustainably. The consequences of
failure to do so are no longer contestable: they include extreme changes in climatic
conditions that are attributed to human activities, the scarcity of supplies of fresh clean
water, and increasing pollution caused by non-biodegradable and/or toxic waste
caused by society’s unsustainable consumption patterns. So much so that the UN
Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, describes the strong storms that devastated the US
east coast and West Indies in 2012 as the “new normal” (ABC News, 2012).
Beck (2000, p. 268, 1993, p. 52) appropriately describes contemporary society as risk
society because it is confronted by hazards which emanate from decisions that privilege
technology’s economic advantages over environmental degradation. Prevailing discourses
normalise these environmental consequences as “the dark side of progress” (Beck, 2008,
p. 50) despite compelling evidence calling for radical changes to consumption patterns and
production methods (Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), 2000, p. 1).
These discourses include corporate report-cards that are little more than
“greenwash” aimed at obscuring long-held norms in sustainability jargon: greenwash
avoids jeopardising the conventional production-consumption formula which ha s
generated financial growth with little regard for the natural environment (Tokar, 1997,
p. 60; Chatterjee and Finger, 1994, p. 40). Any attempt to change this response to
environmental degradation must surely begin with agreement over the meaning of
sustainability. Unfortunately this has not been the case thus far: for employees,
sustainability represents the integration of social aspects of economic life into the
workplace, whilst sustainability for consumers means justification of the continued
consumption of “green” products without feeling guilty aboutattendant environmental
and social degradation. Politicians take advantage of the inherent ambiguity to pay lip
service to socio-environmental values whilst legislating policies that perpetuate
unsustainable economic growth. Greenwash implied in these emergent notions of
accountability emanates from the failureof account-preparers to broaden organisational
accountability beyond the organisation’s legal boundary even though the entity is a
microcosm of global social, economic and political forces.
Consequently, Dahl (2007, p. 163) calls for the development of communicative spaces
that socially inform the process of reforming unsustainable production methods and
consumption patterns by meaningfully integrating multiple-attribute environmental
data into a coherent framework. Gray (2002, p. 700) calls for an imaginative
accountability framework that makes human suffering and environmental degradation
visible as these priorities have been subsumed by the dominant financial perspective.
We respond to Gray (later in Section 3.4) through Saravanamuthu’s (2009, p. 180)
integrated risk framework.
Looking ahead, it is argued that the potential for (sustainable) reform lies in
information science’s user-centred requirement that social and ethical issues be
incorporated into processes of constructing information (Baruchson-Arbib, 2007, p. 58).
Stahl (2011, p. 150) goes further, advocating a framework of responsible innovation that
incorporates social and ethical aspects of information and communication technologies.
Consequently, this article examines how the process of customising enterprise
resource planning (ERP) systems could incorporate socio-ethical values to address the
dichotomy between popular (but unrealistic) representations of sustainability, and
the ESRC’s sobering prescriptions. Since the 1970s, ERP has replaced standalone
ERP and
precautionary
ethics
93
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