Study V: Gait asymmetry and RPE: How are they influenced by carrying a backpack and pulling a trolley?

First I describe how temporal norms are reflected in the mainstream ERP discourses¹⁵. ERP is generally described as both a business solution that provides globally valid

“best business practices” and an IT solution that integrates various functional systems in an organization (Mabert et al., 2000). As an integrated Information System (IS), ERP replaces disparate silos of existing traditional ISs in an organization, and simultaneously standardizes existing organizational practices replacing most of them with the ERP’s in-built globally valid “best” practices (Wagner et al., 2006). The objective of the integration and the standardization is to increase data processing efficiency through increasing the speed of data processing, and in turn to reduce cost (Davenport 2000). ERP fits squarely with Pickles’ (1995: 85) description about new electronic technologies: “(N]ew electronic technologies permit the extensive

surveying of new and more complete sets of data at great speed, decreasing cost and greater efficiency…also permit the standardization and manipulation of a variety of discrete data sets ..that can be codified and even commodified. This control

technology and knowledge engineering require special skills, knowledge and training.

The output is in great demand, students can find good jobs, and government, military, and business applications provides challenge for the university researcher”. The above example on the use of language to describe ITs like ERP reflects instrumental

rationalistic assumptions of efficiency, standardization, and market-driven skills. It is also implied that time can be controlled by task wherein specific discrete data sets are standardized, codified and commodified at ‘great speed’ and ‘decreasing cost.’ Most of the academic studies (recent reviews: Moon, 2007; Esteves & Bohoquez, 2008) as

15 Following Foucauldian literature, I consider a discourse as an institutionalized way of thinking, a social boundary defining what can be said about a specific topic, or, as Butler (1999) puts it, "the limits of acceptable speech". I locate it by checking for the patterns of communication (textual and non-textual)

well as practitioner literature (see the websites of ERP vendors, e.g.

http://www8.sap.com; Davenport, 2000) on ERP implementation from a system

engineering perspective have emphasized the reduction in time and the resultant increase in efficiency (Wagner, 2004). In short, the discourses claim one of ERP’s main benefits to be an increase in process efficiency through control of time and cost, two important resources. This control is achieved through three basic processes built into ERP software: standardization, optimization, and integration. In the next two paragraphs, I explain the temporal norms that underlie these processes inscribed in ERP. I start with standardization.

The objective of standardization is to reduce variability, and thus, make the entity (data) controllable and easily predictable. For example, as in Scientific Management, time for executing a task (broken down to minute levels) is standardized (called standard time) resulting in more controllability and predictability. Scholars have written elaborately on standardization process and the implicit assumptions of controllability and predictability (see Bowker & Star, 1999; Hatling, 1996; Hanseth, Monteiro, &). The same concerns underlie optimization. Here, the overall objective is to complete a transaction within optimal time and optimal cost. Thus, time and cost are taken as two key variables¹⁶ in the models of mathematical optimization that reside inside ERP. The very idea that time is a resource to be optimized is based on the assumption that time is controllable, finitely measurable or empirical, and expendable.

This view of time is further reinforced in the next two steps: the planning of targets to realize the optimal values and the scheduling of the activities or tasks to hit the planned targets—the targets that can be broken down into minute levels (e.g. hourly

16 There are many other variables like space, for example, that is expressed and optimized in terms of the distance that a material is moved on the shop floor.

targets). Next, I turn to integration.

Integration is realized by linking each function and with its sub functions. These links are translated as relations between the function/sub functions (which are basically data), and constructed into a relational database. The relational integration of functions also implies a view of efficient coordination of action over space and time, an

instrumental rational assumption, especially since these discrete data sets will be the responsibility of different groups of people (like the Purchasing department, and the Sales department). More importantly, through relational linking, the data and the operations on the data can become dependent on other data and the operations on them. For example, since the Sales functional module (set of data) is linked with the Production functional module (set of data)) through product ID—one linking key¹⁷--it may happen sales invoices cannot be generated unless the Production department enters or record the status of completion of the product. In practice, the implication is that the time at which production completion data should be recorded is dependent on, and bound by the starting time of the sales invoice generation. Actions (e.g. data recording) get time-bound which, in turn, makes time a bound entity. Thus, it is assumed that time is finite and measurable.

The standardization, optimization, and integration are made possible through breaking down the tasks. That is ERP technology, as perhaps any technology, reconstitutes organizational operations only after it has broken them down into the minutest detail.

The meticulous definition of data items, the precise identification of transactional steps, and the fashioning of such steps into clearly described sequences that cover the

17 For example, the product ID will be present in the master tables of both Sales module and Production module

operations of the entire organization are essential to ERP packages. The unspoken or hidden premise onto which ERP systems are predicated assumes that organizational operations can ultimately be reduced to a large series of procedural steps. On this account, organizing is no more than the mechanics by which these steps are brought together and coordinated. The syntax of ERP systems just entails carefully defined data items, transactional steps and rules for bringing them into various combinations.

Placed in such a context, the meaning of process tends, in fact, to dissolve into that of procedure, i.e. a linear sequence of discrete transactional steps necessary to

accomplish a certain task (Sawyer & Southwick, 2002). The mandatory adherence to procedures that is to be enacted by the ERP user imposes a linear temporal order on the task execution (as opposed to the lack of this linear temporal order in the sequence skipping of WestIndia).

In sum, in the enactment of ERP’s global practices, time is expected to be objective, rigid, linear, bound, measurable and controllable. The expected enactments of these temporal norms are schedule adherence and procedural adherence, and time bound action. If we compare these temporal norms and enactments, they are in conflict with that of the temporal norms and enactment in WestIndia. ERP’s temporal norms reflect, to a significant extent, the set of temporal norms that has been labeled “Western” in the literature. Following the literature on temporal norms, if we assume that these are the temporal norms more frequently enacted or made salient in Western, or perhaps more industrialized part of the world, it is not surprising that ERP’s temporal norms is the reflection of those so-called Western norms. This is because ERP has been

designed and developed originally in the Western countries. As I mentioned earlier, the literature on technology development has suggested that developer’s norms or broadly culture gets inscribed into technology (Dubinskas, 1988). In short, there is a

conflict between the temporal norms and enactments of WestIndia’s local practices and the temporal norms and expected enactment of ERP’s global practices. Also, while WestIndia’s temporal norms reflect the so-called traditional norms, ERP’s temporal norms reflect the so-called Western norms. Thus, we have a cross-temporal cross-cultural context in which ERP was implemented. Since the same arguments go with GovIndia too, I do not discuss the GovIndia case in detail.

Having defined and explicated the key terms in my study and their empirical

significance, in the following paragraph I give more empirical context, a brief sketch of the industrial and institutional environment of the State where the two

implementations took place.