The design of information technology planning systems for varying organizational contexts

Abstract

The conduct of IT planning processes has been a dominant managerial concern in organizations. Yet, current IT planning research offers little guidance on the types of planning actions and behaviour that are appropriate to organizational contexts. The motivation of this paper is to extend the existing literature by addressing the following major question: How should organizations design IT planning systems to manage the conduct of their IT planning processes? The paper seeks to address this question by (i) identifying key organizational forces that affect the IT planning processes, (ii) articulating some of the key dimensions of IT planning systems and (iii) elaborating upon propositions for linking designs of IT planning systems with organizational context. The concepts and the propositions are expected to provide significant guidance for further research and practice.