ERP-Enabled Digitalisation, Routine-Task Automation and the Dual-Path Reshaping of the Finance Function: Evidence from 480 Chinese Finance Professionals
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.57125/FS.2026.09.20.09Abstract
Enterprise systems are widely credited with freeing finance professionals from routine work. Yet, the literature is divided on what that liberation does to the professional role: one tradition anticipates enrichment toward business partnering and decision support, another anticipates destabilisation, since displacement removes the very tasks through which the role was defined. This study specifies both outcomes as consequences of a single mechanism — the substitution of routine tasks — and tests them jointly. Survey data from 480 finance and accounting professionals in ERP-adopting Chinese enterprises, sampled to yield three equal strata of finance-shared-service-centre (FSSC) maturity, were analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling with 10,000 bootstrap resamples and formal measurement-invariance testing. ERP-enabled digitalisation intensity strongly predicted routine-task automation substitution (β = .487), which in turn raised decision-support effectiveness (β = .480) and business-partnering engagement (β = .392). Two hypothesised relationships were significant in the opposite direction: substitution reduced rather than increased role ambiguity (β = −.347), and digital capability attenuated rather than reinforced that reduction. Multi-group analysis identified shared-service maturity as a threshold condition — the decision-support benefit accrued progressively as maturity rose, whereas the partnering benefit emerged only at high maturity. The findings reposition routine automation as role-clarifying rather than role-threatening in the Chinese ERP setting and identify shared-service maturity as the condition converting released capacity into business-facing work. Practically, automation alone does not transform the finance role: its value depends on practitioner capability and organisational structure — a caution for enterprises treating system adoption as sufficient. This mechanism-level, dual-path account offers an original correction to the enrichment-versus-destabilisation debate in an underexamined emerging-economy context.
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