A MODEL OF INFLUENCES OF ENVIRONMENTAL STAKEHOLDERS ON STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS PLANNING SUCCESS IN AN ENTERPRISE

Tomaz Hovelja,Rok Rupnik,Olegas Vasilecas

doi:10.3846/20294913.2013.818591

Abstract

Worldwide spending of enterprises on information technologies (IT) in 2011 is projected to total USD 2.6 trillion with 350 enterprises each investing more than USD 1 billion. Despite such large and rapidly growing investment figures, the success rates of IT deployment projects over the past 20 years remained relatively low: approximately half of IT deployment projects were unsuccessful. Literature review reveals that inadequate strategic information system planning (SISP) is one of the main reasons for low deployment success rates of IT deployment projects and, thus, one of the current critical IT management issues. For this reason researchers and practitioners in the SISP field are currently directing their efforts into expanding the traditional understanding of SISP as a pure IT planning activity. In addition to the activities dedicated to the planning of IT investments, new SISP models should also include the contextual activities that enable adaptation of the deployed IT to the environment and knowledge transfer from the environment. In this paper, the authors propose an extended SISP model that includes influences of environmental stakeholders. The developed SISP model was empirically tested on a sample from the population of 1000 largest enterprises in Slovenia. The authors believe that the findings of their research and the suggested extended SISP model will improve understanding of SISP success factors in enterprises and consequently enable them to manage their IT investments with greater success.

Highlights

The current global transformation into the creation and modernization of a sustainable knowledge based society and sustainable knowledge economy is a very complicated process (Melnikas 2010), which among other things requires new information and communication systems for on-line and just-in-time decision-making (Sakalauskas 2010)
Recent findings in the literature (Grover, Sergars 2005; Cohen 2008; Dhillon 2008; Pearlson, Saunders 2009; Bechor et al 2010) as well as experience of the authors gained during work as consultants for big enterprises in Slovenia allows believing that such internal analysis can ignore important influences of environmental stakeholders on the success of the deployment of information technologies (IT) investments
Results of the empirical research. As it can be seen from the Student’s t-tests and Cohen d effect sizes in Table 1, the two studied high and low Strategic information systems planning (SISP) quality groups of enterprises from our sample exhibit statistically significant differences in their average economic success as well as the average success of IT deployment. Such statistically significantly higher averages of SISP results for the group of enterprises with high SISP quality scores are in line with the findings of the reviewed literature and the expectations of our model

Summary

Introduction

The current global transformation into the creation and modernization of a sustainable knowledge based society and sustainable knowledge economy is a very complicated process (Melnikas 2010), which among other things requires new information and communication systems for on-line and just-in-time decision-making (Sakalauskas 2010). Strategic information systems planning (SISP) has been widely identified as one of the reasons of low deployment success rates of planned IT investments and, one of the current critical IT management issues (Lederer, Sethi 1988; Hartono et al 2003; Bechor et al 2010). Recent findings in the literature (Grover, Sergars 2005; Cohen 2008; Dhillon 2008; Pearlson, Saunders 2009; Bechor et al 2010) as well as experience of the authors gained during work as consultants for big enterprises in Slovenia allows believing that such internal analysis can ignore important influences of environmental (external) stakeholders on the success of the deployment of IT investments. Like in literature on the diffusion of IT innovation (DOI), stakeholders are understood as social groups in the environment that have common interests and can influence the way enterprises invest and use information technologies (i.e. owners, competitors, potential competitors, suppliers, customers, IT sellers, IT consultants, governmental institutions and knowledge-forming institutions)

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion