A Journey through the Wilderness: An Autoethnographic Study of the ERP System Implementation Process As Created by IT Project Managers and Team Members

Autoethnography has emerged as a relatively new methodological approach within the fields of project management, information technology, organizational behavioral studies, and more broadly within the social sciences. As a reflexive methodology it offers the beginning and experienced researcher a means of critically exploring the social forces that shapes ones involvement in the information technology project implementation process and subsequent the project management experience. In this article the authors discuss the significance of autoethnography as it was utilized to research the experiences of project managers in the enterprise resource planning systems implementation process. The process involved recollecting, writing and re-reading experiences in light of social capital and organizational theories that explore the socio-psychological and cultural aspects within the implementation period of an enterprise resources planning system. The autoethnographic approach used in this article contributes to the emergent methodological literature that embraces the textual or narrative turn within qualitative studies of information technology and project management.