Aligning DSS development with organization development

Abstract

One of the fundamental assumptions underpinning the strategic school of management is that the most appropriate structure for an organization is dependent on its strategy; strategy drives the structure and a change in strategy requires a change in administrative structure and also in formal information systems. Rockart and Scott Morton have proposed that information technology (IT) may have an essential role in organizational change. However, only a few researchers have studied MIS/DSS in the context of organizational development. Most of the research has been based on technological imperative. If an organizational imperative is adopted this leads to the consideration of the use of IT in the context of organization development. At present organizations are developing their strategies for the 1990's which demand structural changes or at least development of the organization's control and decision-making processes. The essential point is that the changes also effect the information needs of organizational actors. Thus, organizational change quite often requires the existing information systems to be reconstructed or even replaced. For MIS/DSS development the establishment of new information channels offers a challenging task. In this study a process approach to the analysis of the relationship of OD and MIS/DSS development is applied. The change process in a Finnish public-sector organization is observed in a longitudinal manner. In the first phase of this study the author's role was to assist in aligning the planning of a single information system — Workplace Information System (WIS) — with other organizational change processes. Empirical data was gathered through action research. One of the most important findings of this study was that new WIS options were created through organizational learning. Both researchers and organizational actors learned to focus on WIS as an opportunity for organizational change.