Individual and organizational effectiveness: Perspectives on the impact of ESS in multinational organizations

Abstract

Individual and organizational effectiveness are foundations of Information Systems’ theory, research, and practice. In this paper, Quinn and associates’ competing values approach (CVA) of organizational effectiveness is used for discussing and assessing the impacts of Executive Support Systems (ESS) on managerial behavior and leadership. It is suggested that an ESS is effective to the extent that it supports top-level managers and executives in promoting organizational effectiveness and that the ESS should effectively support the managers in their different managerial roles. A CVA-based analysis of data from interviews with ESS users in Mexico and Sweden suggests that ESS can support managerial behavior and leadership in different ways. Based on the empirical study and CVA, four archetypes of ESS use are suggested. The study has implications for: 1) ESS theory and research in that it links ESS use to behavioral complexity, and 2) ESS design and implementation in that it suggests a complementary view of the purposes of ESS.