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Abstract:
The strategic potential of information systems (IS) is now well recognized. However, there has been little explicit research on the process through which managers decide to develop IS applications that may provide strategic benefits. Consequently, several divergent views exist about this process, including those that consider it as a planned process, as a process that ignores formal planning methodologies, as a process that takes place incrementally, and as a process that occurs accidentally. This paper addresses this divergence of views by using strategic IS decisions in eighty-one companies to generate an empirical taxonomy including five alternative ways of making strategic IS decisions. The five decision-making processes—namely, planned, provincial, incremental, fluid, and political—seem quite distinct, in terms of the activities involved and the influences encountered, as well as the conditions under which they are used. Thus, the paper suggests to managers deciding on potentially strategic systems that no one process should be considered universally applicable. Instead, anyone of five processes comprising the taxonomy may be used, depending on the specific circumstances.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Rajiv Sabherwal
Rajiv Sabherwal is an Associate Professor in the Department of Decision Sciences and Information Systems at Florida International University. He earned a Ph.D. in information systems from the University of Pittsburgh in 1989 and a Post Graduate Diploma in management from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, in 1983. Dr. Sabherwal has authored numerous articles that have appeared in Decision Sciences. European Journal of Information Systems. Information and Management. Journal of Information Systems. Journal of Strategic Information Systems. Organization Science, and other journals. His research interests include strategic utilization of information technology. information systems planning and decision making, behavioral aspects of information systems development, and global information systems.
William R. King
William R. King is University Professor in the Katz Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of more than a dozen books and 200 papers that have appeared in the leading journals in management science, information systems, and strategic management. He has served as President of the Institute of Management Sciences (TIMS), as Senior Editor of MIS Quarterly, and as General Chair of the International Conference on Information Systems (lCIS). In 1993-94, he was instrumental in the startup of a new information systems professional society—the Association for Information Systems (AIS).
