ERP Adoption and Strengthening of Management Accounting and Controls at a Pakistani Manufacturing SME: A Case Study Approach

What the paper says

This study seeks to explore how enterprise resource planning (ERP) adoption in a manufacturing SME strengthens management accounting and controls, and how ERP-driven changes are sustained to ensure sustainable survival. A single holistic case study design was adopted to explore the ERP adoption process under an extended Burns and Scapens framework and dynamic capabilities as theoretical lenses at ABLT (a manufacturing SME in Pakistan). Fourteen semi-structured interviews, observations and documents were analysed using Gioia’s methodology to surface first-order codes, seven second-order themes and four aggregate dimensions. The findings reveal a multi-stage process. ERP adoption was triggered by the convergence of internal manual frustrations and external customer-driven pressure for traceable information. During implementation, managers negotiated financial, production and technical logics and embedded real-time accounting routines while drawing on existing standard operating procedures to reduce resistance. Once stabilized, these routines enabled team learning that built sensing, seizing and transforming capabilities. Dynamic capabilities, in turn, allowed the firm to reconfigure rapidly when COVID-19 disrupted supply lines, thereby protecting cash flow and accelerating post-crisis growth. A conceptual model shows how institutional alignment and capability building interact recursively rather than sequentially. The study contributes by integrating the extended Burns and Scapens framework with dynamic capabilities theory to understand ERP-driven management accounting and controls in the context of SMEs. For practitioners, the study highlights the significance of aligning customer expectations, internal policies and team learning to turn ERP from a technical project into a platform for ongoing resilience and growth.