User participation and management infoemation system use

Abstract

The major concern of this thesis is the relationship between user participation and management information system(MIS) use. Under the premise that participation may not always lead to successful system utilization, a contingency model and a causal process model are proposed by integrating the findings from previous research. Those factors are considered as important contingencies which include the stages of system development life cycle, task complexity, system initiator, and the variables related to the environment for system implementation such as the maturity of MIS function, formality, MIS group capability, top management support, and general user attitudes. The causal process model hypothesizes that user participation enhances user understanding, induces more appreciative user perceptions of the system quality, increases user acceptance, and consequently makes the system be utilized more extensively. It is also hypothesized that the causal structures may differ across the various contingency factors. The data used for validating the conceptual model are collected from 134 users of seventy-seven different information systems in thirty-two business organizations. A cross-tabulation analysis is employed to examine the effects of the contingency factors on the user participation-system use relationship, and the causal relationships are tested using path analysis technique. The results support in general the proposed model. In conclusion, MIS managers should not always count on the participative system design strategy as the best policy but look at the contingencies first and bear in mind the process lying between user participation and the system usage. The findings, however, should be interpreted with caution, since this study has several limitations in measurement and sample size. Future research is suggested and encouraged with more refined methodology.