Information technology (IT) programs are collections of projects structured to meet goals established by top management regarding the use of technology. Prior research has established the importance of commitment to the organizational goals set by top management and a shared understanding of the goals among the project teams. However, conflicts occur among project teams due to pursuit of their own goals, their unique approaches to completion of required tasks, and their individual need for limited resources. These conflicts need to be resolved in a fashion that leads to the pursuit of program goals, not the independent goals lodged in individual projects. We develop a model of an IT program environment to study the effects of goal interdependence among projects and shared understanding of organizational goals on promoting integrative conflict management (ICM). ICM techniques yield agreement on decisions in the face of conflicting ideas. In turn, ICM promotes arrival at an agreement about implementation means and commitment to the IT program goals, which are better achieved as a result. The model presents a new perspective for research on conflict that considers the specific resolution process to be a key component in the attainment of goals. Practitioners should instill integrative conflict resolution techniques into program and project processes as a fundamental means of achieving goals critical to the organization.
A number of models and theories in information systems research include concepts of a match between two variables or states. The development of measures for this concept can present problems, because decisions must be made about the nature of the comparison. Should indirect measures of the match be employed, then methodological issues arise about how to best handle the measure when testing the model. Difference scores are commonly used to measure a match between variables or states in IS research, but these have implicit assumptions about the theory and data characteristics that are often false. Not unexpectedly, false assumptions can lead to erroneous conclusions about the relationships among the variables that are used to determine a match in a research model. The implicit assumptions restrict the form of the relationships and limit the IS researcher's ability to understand the possible interplay among theoretical concepts. We suggest some guidelines for the formation and testing of models that measure the match. In addition, we recommend polynomial regression analysis as one means of analyzing the more complex relationships in IS studies. We then use an IS service quality example to illustrate the issues involved in the use of matching variables and make suggestions with regard to using or avoiding difference scores.
There are many benefits of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, but their implementation is both complicated and difficult because the product spans functional silos and involves many internal and external entities. An ERP system is the outcome of social processes, and different ERP systems can embody distinct social arrangements when developed in different cultural contexts. Such social arrangements are difficult to change due the closure effect of technology stabilization. This leads to various misfit problems, both during and after ERP implementation, causing adverse effects on delivered ERP quality. With a survey of 85 ERP implementation cases in Taiwan, this study derives and empirically tests the main as well as the interaction effects of the country of origin of the ERP package, consultant quality, top management support, and user support of the ERP system quality as perceived by the client after implementation. The results demonstrate the important role of the country of origin of the ERP package and consultant quality in configuring a high-quality ERP system and alleviating the negative effect of misfit problems.
Turnover of information system (IS) personnel is a critical problem for organizations. To gain a better understanding of turnover, researchers have explored career orientations that characterize an employee's internal motivations and desires. The inability of an organization to match career desires is often related to measures indicative of turnover in IS employees, including intent to leave and career dissatisfaction, though empirical evidence is indirect and inconclusive. Using career orientations, this study explicitly models the impact of the discrepancy between the wants of employees and employee perceptions of how their organization satisfies those wants. The model is based on discrepancy theory and predicts the gap is closely related to the turnover indicators. Model predictions hold true for a sample of 153 IS personnel. These results indicate the importance of developing career plans that employees perceive as matching their wants.
The article discusses the paper "Measuring Information System Service Quality: SERVQUAL From the Other Side," by James J. Jiang, Gary Klein, and Christopher L. Carr.
Keeping satisfied information systems (IS) professionals at the entry level has become a difficult task for IS managers. Financial incentives have led to escalating costs without widespread improvement of the situation. To capitalize on nonfinancial rewards, organizations must understand the relationships between employees' internal desires, the environment fostered by the organization, and career satisfaction. This paper is a report on a study of 101 entry-level IS professionals. The data analysis indicates that IS professionals find more satisfaction with their career when supervisor support is prominent and an adequate range of opportunities that satisfy career desires exist within the organization.
Decision Support Systems (DSS) and Expert Systems (ES) are both aimed at improving decision making. Current DSS usually concentrate on quantitative models while ES emphasize logic and reasoning. In this paper, we review previous ES approaches used by DSS to handle decision models. We propose an extension to such systems, an Agent for Intelligent Model Management (AIMM), as an interface between DSS and the users. AIMM utilizes a combination of ES knowledge representations and reasoning mechanisms to make a wide variety of models available to decision makers so that they may apply these models without becoming involved in technical or procedural aspects of implementation. A prototype of the system for financial problems is described.
Many information system selection decisions, software decisions, hardware decisions, and project selection decisions involve characteristics that are of a qualitative nature. Present methodologies either ignore the problem of selecting qualitative attributes, or require the assignment of a numerical value to a qualitative variable in order to make a choice involving qualitative benefits. These approaches require application of artificial measures to qualitative variables. A procedure that overcomes these difficulties for selection problems with known alternatives is presented. The procedure is an implicit enumeration procedure based on properties of preference theory, requires no formal optimization procedure, and would be simple to implement in an interactive decision setting involving selection from among a set of known alternatives.