Information and Decision Sciences Department Curtis 1. Carlson School of Management University of Minnesota 321 19th Avenue South Minneapolis, MN 55455 U.S.A.
The process of information technology adoption and use is critical to deriving the benefits of information technology. Yet from a conceptual standpoint, few empirical studies have made a distinction between individuals' pre-adoption and post-adoption (continued use) beliefs and attitudes. This distinction is crucial in understanding and managing this process over time. The current study combines innovation diffusion and attitude theories in a theoretical framework to examine differences in pre-adoption and post-adoption beliefs and attitudes. The examination of Windows technology in a single organization indicates that users and potential adopters of information technology differ on their determinants of behavioral intention, attitude, and subjective norm. Potential adopter intention to adopt is solely determined by normative pressures, whereas user intention is solely determined by attitude. In addition, potential adopters base their attitude on a richer set of innovation characteristics than users. Whereas pre-adoption attitude is based on perceptions of usefulness, ease-of-use, result demonstrability, visibility, and trialability, post-adoption attitude is only based on instrumentality beliefs of usefulness and perceptions of image enhancements.
While the use and costs of Management Information Systems (MIS) have become highly visible, little attention has been paid to assessing and communicating system effectiveness. Evaluation of system effectiveness is difficult due to its multidimensionality. its quantitative and qualitative aspects, and the multiple, and often conflicting, evaluator viewpoints. This article provides an overview of what system effectiveness means and how it should be measured. It is the first of two articles to appear in consecutive issues of the MIS Quarterly. Starting with a definition of system effectiveness, this article examines evaluation of system effectiveness in terms of a conceptual hierarchy of system objectives. The hierarchy is used to discuss problems in, and recommendations for, evaluating system effectiveness, and to compare MIS evaluation approaches. The second article characterizes and compares the evaluator viewpoints on system effectiveness for decision makers in several functional groups involved in MIS implementation — user, MIS, internal audit, and management. The second article recommends several MIS evaluation approaches for incorporating multiple dimensions and multiple evaluator viewpoints into evaluations of information system effectiveness.
Evaluations of Management Information System (MIS) tend to be subjective and are influenced by the perceptions of system objectives, as well as the experiences with system performance in accomplishing organizational objectives. Consequently, the assessments of MIS effectiveness are often controversial and can be sources of disagreement and conflict between different functional groups involved in MIS implementation -- users, MIS development, internal audit, and top management personnel. This article, the second of two parts, describes and compares the evaluator viewpoints on system effectiveness for these various functional groups. The first part, which appeared in the previous issue of the MIS Quarterly (Volume 5, Number 3) presented a conceptual hierarchy of system objectives and compared various approaches for evaluating accomplishment of objectives.
Although much has been about the centralization versus decentralization of information services, relatively little is known about how the structure of an organization influences the level of centralization or decentralization. This paper presents the results of a study which examined the organizational context of the information services function. The authors attempted to identify those organizational characteristics that are associated with the structure of the information services function. If was found that the organizational environment does have an influence upon the level of decentralization of information services. Few organizational characteristics, however, were found to influence the structure of information services consistently across all organizations. Further research relating organizational form to its impact on information services is suggested.