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The paper aims to question which role the ES has in organizing, focusing aspects of flexibility and stability.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-heading\">Design\/methodology\/approach<\/jats:title><jats:p>The paper is a qualitative, longitudinal, case study of how an ES maintains, and even reinforces, existing administrative organizational structures. The theoretical lens used is mainly structuration theory.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-heading\">Findings<\/jats:title><jats:p>An ES can take the part of an organization's administrative paradox. An administrative paradox is two sides of the same coin when coordinating organizations \u2013 the concurrent striving for flexibility and stability. The studied ES even centralizes control, creates norms, and enhances power for actors in positions of authority (top management). Because of its structure and configuration the ES is a powerful tool to coordinate. The ES is considered to be organizationally ungainly, but at the same time indispensable.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-heading\">Practical implications<\/jats:title><jats:p>The paper provides valuable insights on how the studied organizations try to deal with standardization\/stability and flexibility that can be valuable for other system users or implementers to learn from, as well as the analysis as a whole.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-heading\">Originality\/value<\/jats:title><jats:p>The paper combines structuration theory and theories covering the administrative paradox and aspects of coordination in order to analyze and discuss the implementation and use of an ES.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.1108\/17410391011019769","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2011,5,21]],"date-time":"2011-05-21T08:21:47Z","timestamp":1305966107000},"page":"181-200","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":7,"title":["The enterprise system as a part of an organization's administrative paradox"],"prefix":"10.1108","volume":"23","author":[{"given":"Ulf","family":"Melin","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"140","reference":[{"key":"key2022030920230686100_b1","unstructured":"Asken\u00e4s, L. and Westelius, A. 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