9. Implications for practice
The current study found support for the central hy- pothesis that IS planning autonomy predicts IS planning effectiveness, and for the sub-hypothesis that strategy selection does likewise. Correlation is not causation, but managers, who believe that the independent vari- ables are responsible for the variation in the dependent one, might want to make diligent efforts to facilitate autonomy in the IS planning of the subsidiaries of multinational firms. That is, parent managers may want to consider delegating more IS planning autonomy, and subsidiary managers might want to seek more such autonomy.
Parent managers would thus first examine in detail how they maintain control over IS planning at the present time. They might determine if they prescribe new applications entirely without any flexibility for the subsidiary, or if they delegate any decision making at all to the subsidiary. They might attempt to identify the potential benefits of delegating new decision making to the subsidiary. These would result from its knowledge of the local environment. Parent managers might also identify any costs (and risks) of new decision making for the subsidiary. These might result from the sub- sidiary’s lack of knowledge about parent concerns or its lack of expertise in information systems planning and construction.
Subsidiary managers might also investigate the nature of the control applied by the parent. They might present to the parent the benefits and costs of delegation of decision making to them in order to convince the parent to expand the autonomy.
This consideration of extending autonomy would be especially true for strategy selection. Managers might thus particularly want to facilitate autonomy for identi- fying specific new business processes, IT architectures, and projects along with project priorities. Autonomy for the selection of the strategy, the focal point of IS plan- ning, affects the ownership of the final strategy itself. The parent as well as the subsidiary would particularly want to assess the potential benefits and costs of auton- omy for this phase.