Distributed Computing Systems, Structure And Strategy

Abstract

Disparate studies have provided inconsistent results of the effect of information technology (IT) on organizational structure and strategy. Additionally, some other studies indicate contradictory outcomes from the implementation and use of identical technologies. This study examined the effects of distributed application systems on organizational structure and strategy. Using distributed application system (DAS) components as measures of distributivity, the study examined the impact of distributivity of data, program and user-interface on the dimensions of organizational structure and business level strategies. The research findings indicate that there is a synergic relationship among the components of DAS, and that the DAS components are highly intercorrelated. Further, the study has demonstrated that user-interface replication in DAS is strongly associated with data replication and program partitioning has a strong impact on user-interface partitioning.