earticle

영어

ERP system is defined as a application system aiming at maximizing the productivity of companies through supporting effective resources management and decision making with the integration of several departments’ company-wide databases. Although Chinese enterprises have been officially using ERP system for roughly ten years, ERP system have already played a key role in company management. The objective of this study is to systematically evaluate the level of influence that ERP system introduction and operation have had on corporate financial performance in Chinese enterprises. In order to empirically investigate the effect of ERP system introduction on corporate financial performance, the research data were gathered centering on six fiscal years’ financial data of 69 ones sampled from enterprises listed on the Shanghai and the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. And then, the analyses of the difference between the financial performances before and after ERP system introduction in companies were performed via T-test on key financial performance measures in the areas of productivity, profit and activity. As the result of this study, the improvement of financial performances after ERP system introduction into the companies were found to be statistically significant in only a few measures. This result is thought to be due to both the restricted availability of samples and IT productivity paradox phenomenon. That is, since the sampling was limited to the companies adopting ERP system, the differences between the companies which operate ERP system and the ones which do not could not be considered. Also, the companies listed on the Shanghai and the Shenzhen Stock Exchange were sampled, but Chinese companies listed abroad could not be included. Moreover, the probability of IT productivity paradox phenomenon in ERP system investment in Chinese companies could not be explained due to the limitation of collecting long-term financial data beyond six fiscal years. Despite these limitations, this study has modest degree of contributions to systematically investigating the status of ERP system supply and utilization in China and proposing the methodology to objectively prove the effect of ERP system introduction on corporate financial performance in Chinese companies.