User Involvement In Information Systems Planning Leads To Strategic Success: An Empirical Study | Ramraj Palanisamy & Sushil

This paper presents empirical findings for relationship between user involvement in Information Systems (IS) planning and strategic success of IS. User involvement has been considered in two stages of IS planning. In strategic planning of IS, information requirements analysis and architecture are considered as the two stages. For strategic success of IS, IS enabled organizational change, IS enabled competitive advantage, and IS enabled organizational learning are considered. Field generated measures for the strategic success of IS were developed by idea engineering. Hypotheses are formulated to test the relationship between user involvement and IS strategic success variables. Empirical data was collected by a questionnaire survey to test the hypotheses. IS users and planners participated in the survey. The survey covered 42 organizations from eight sectors with a sample size of 296. Respondent?s relevance for the survey was ensured. Scales table describing the dimensions of user involvement and IS success was used to synthesize the responses. Univariate results for research variables are presented in optimistic, most likely and pessimistic scenarios. The dimension-wise values of a variable are given to gain more insight into the status of user involvement and IS strategic success in the surveyed organizations. Mixed results were obtained in hypotheses testing. The results of statistical testing on the research hypotheses show that user involvement in IS planning influences IS enabled organizational change and IS enabled organizational learning but doesn?t show a significant relationship with IS enabled competitive advantage. The study also shows user involvement in one stage of IS planning influences the level of participation in the subsequent stage.