Most leading organizations, in all sectors of industry, commerce and government are dependent upon
ERP for their organizational survival. Yet despite the importance of the decision to adopt ERP and its
impact on the entire firm’s performance the IT literature has been in the large part silent on the nature
of the ERP investment decision. This study is the first of its kind to determine the preference structure
of senior managers around the organizational benefits and risks of adopting ERP. We present the
results which provide interesting insights into how managers’ perceive the benefit and risk factors
salient to the organization’s adoption decision. In line with prior research we found that improved
productivity, and information and planning are important drivers of the ERP adoption decision.
Moreover our findings reveal that the benefits of ERP are weighted almost twice as important as the
risks when making an ERP investment decision. However when it comes to risk, interestingly
managers consider issues such as top management commitment and vendor support as more
important than financial ris
