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Twenty information resource managers employed by medium to large organizations in diverse industries were interviewed to discover their difficulties in learning top management's objectives and their techniques for overcoming these difficulties. The thirteen difficulties can be viewed as strategy formulation or strategy communication problems. The sixteen techniques can likewise be viewed as facilitating strategy formulation or strategy communication. The research revealed that participants in strategy formulation have no problem understanding top management's objectives while information resource managers who do not participate in strategy formulation do experience that problem.
This article will review the growing importance of information in organizations and the need to integrate the objectives and strategy of the organization with those of the information function. The research methodology section will then discuss sample considerations and the structured interview process which was used to gather data. Following this, the results will be presented. The findings indicate that it is useful to view the difficulties as roadblocks to the formulation of the IS plan or to the communication of that plan. Several techniques for overcoming these difficulties wilt be outlined and the implications of these findings for research and practice will be discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A field study of middle- and upper-level managers was undertaken to explain managers' selection of communication media. The findings indicate that media vary in their capacity to convey information cues. Managers prefer rich media for ambiguous communications and less rich media for unequivocal communications. The data suggest that high performing managers are more sensitive to the relationship between message ambiguity and media richness than low performing managers. Implications for managers' use of information systems and electronic media are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the media selection behavior of directors (executives) and managers through the use of multiple methods. The findings indicate the directors were more 'self' oriented in their media choices, more often choosing media based on access/ease of use criteria, while the managers were more 'other' oriented, more often making choices based on media richness/social presence criteria. These differences have implications in the interpretation of communication from directors and managers to the rest of the organization and suggest a model for understanding the use of 'rich' and 'lean' communication media. The literature review of the study makes a major contribution by fitting together the multiple theories applied to the area and showing how conflicting results from all the established media selection theories make sense in different circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern organizations are investing heavily in information technology (IT) with the objective of increasing overall profitability and the productivity of their knowledge workers. Yet, it is often claimed that the actual benefits of IT are disappointing at best, and that IT spending has failed to yield significant productivity gains- hence the productivity paradox. Evidence is fragmented and somewhat mitigated. This paper argues that the current state of empirical research results from a failure to understand the interplay between IT and managerial work. It addresses this issue by analyzing patterns of association between IT usage and the nature of managerial work in different organizational contexts. Fifty-nine semi-structured interviews were conducted with middle line managers in three large companies: a Bank, a Telecommunications company, and a Utility. In addition, daily activities and IT usage were logged. The data indicate that the relationship between the level of IT usage and the nature of managerial work was stronger in the two organizations that were reorienting their strategies (Bank, Telecommunications) than in the one pursuing its existing strategy (Utility). It was also found that the pattern of the relationship between IT usage and the nature of managerial work depended on the kind of strategic reorientation implemented by the firm. For instance, in the Bank, the level of IT usage was associated with the amount of time spent by managers on information-related activities (e.g., reading reports, gathering information) and on disturbance handling activities (e.g., resolving conflicts, managing crises). In the Telecommunications company, IT usage was associated with more time spent on information-related activities and less on negotiation- related activities (e.g., discussions with colleagues on resource sharing, discussions with subordinates on performance standards). This finding suggests that heavy IT users paid greater attention to and spent more time.. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following Kodak's landmark information technology (IT) outsourcing decisions in 1989, the IT outsourcing market grew to 76 billion dollars in 1995. As the outsourcing market continues to grow and as new contracting options emerge, the accumulated experiences of firms offer significant opportunities for learning. This paper builds on a previous collection of data on 61 IT sourcing decisions made in 40 U.S. and U.K. organizations during the period 1991 to 1995. This paper reanalyzed transcribed interviews from 145 participants. Using "expected cost savings achieved" as an indicator of success, five best practices were identified in the case companies. First, selective outsourcing decisions had higher success rates than total outsourcing or total insourcing decisions. Second, senior executives and IT managers who made decisions together had higher success rates than either stakeholder group acting alone. Third, organizations that invited both internal and external bids had higher success rates than organizations that merely compared external bids with current IT costs. Fourth, short-term contracts achieved higher success rates than long-term contracts. Fifth, detailed fee-for-service contracts had higher success rates than other types of fee-for-service contracts. The critical elements of three contracting models are described: fee-for-service contracts, strategic alliances/partnerships, and buying-in of vendor resources. When the practices generated from the case studies are compared with current practices, we begin to understand which practices are proving robust and why new practices emerge. For example, in the participating companies, the rhetoric of a "partnership" was misused to describe contracts that are actually fee-for-service contracts. Today, practitioners who understand the inherent conflicts in fixed fee-for-service contracts are demanding what they perceive to be more favorable contracting options, such as flexibly-priced contracts, performance-based... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study provides an account of how richness occurs in communication that uses electronic mail. In examining actual e-mail exchanged among managers in a corporation, the study interprets the managerial use of the communication medium of electronic mail as the users themselves understand and experience it. Employing the research approach of interpretivism in general and hermeneutics in particular, the study finds that richness or leanness is not an inherent property of the electronic-mail medium, but an emergent property of the interaction of the electronic-mail medium with its organizational context, where the interaction is described in terms of distanciation, autonomization, social construction, appropriation, and enactment. Conclusions and recommendations are that managers who receive e-mail are not passive recipients of data, but active producers of meaning; that the best or just an appropriate communication medium is not determined through an individual manager's exercise of rational decision making, but emerges as best or appropriate over time, over the course of the medium's interactions with many users; that systems professionals need to treat the managerial user of an e-mail system not merely as a client of in formation services, but also as a processor or co-processor to be integrated into the system design; and that in formation systems researchers need to dedicate attention to the actual processes by which the users of a communication medium come to understand themselves, their own use of the medium, and their organizational context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An emerging body of research in group decision support systems (GDSS) provides evidence that computer technology can and does impact the quality of decision making in groups. Most GDSS research is oriented toward examining the effects of a computer system on group outcomes, typically decision quality or group consensus, with the process itself often treated as a "black box." The research reported in this article addresses the need for a closer, micro-level examination of group process. An important group variable, namely influence behavior, was isolated and examined at various levels and by multiple methods. A model of specific GDSS effects on influence behavior was developed, based on an information exchange view of decision making and on the impact of a GDSS as a communication channel. Based on the research questions of interest in the study, several propositions and hypotheses were advanced and empirically tested on a specific implementation of a GDSS. Results were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The major empirical findings of the study showed no significant difference between the overall amount of influence behavior attempted in computer-supported versus unsupported groups, although significant differences were found in the pattern of influence behaviors, i.e., the different types of behaviors used. In addition, the distribution of influence behavior was more even in GDSS groups than in unsupported groups on one of two measures used. Empirical findings partially supported the research model, with indications that decision-making groups need more active guidance in understanding how to adapt computer support technology to their view of decision-making processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dialogue management involves the application of systems in the design and delivery of user-system dialogues. This article describes a dialogue management environment that is based on a concept of dialogue independence: the separation of dialogue definition from dialogue execution. In this environment, software facilities provide building blocks for design and delivery of dialogues that are consistent, efficient, shareable, and portable. The environment supports multiple workstation and communication protocol environments. This environment is compared to those emerging in homogeneous hardware environments such as HyperCard.

This article describes a dialogue management approach based on a concept of dialogue independence, similar to the data independence associated with database management. We first describe the user environment, with a focus on those concepts useful to the designers of online, interactive information systems, particularly the applications systems for personal computing and decision support. The establishment of a dialogue management environment establishes the building blocks for an online, interactive interface design that reduces the time and effort required to develop an effective and meaningful interface. The approach to dialogue design presented in this article has been applied in organizations developing systems across a variety of computer, workstation, and communications environments. The reality of multiple vendors and heterogeneous computer and communications devices heightens the interest in dialogue standards and dialogue support of interoperability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]