Contributions to Research
THIS RESEARCH HAS CONTRIBUTED AN EXAMINATION of the SISP process and an
attempt to determine the interdependencies among different facets of SISP. Although
it should be interpreted within the limitations of the study—that is, the exclusive use
of IS planners as subjects and the reliance on their satisfaction as a key measure—it
provides a more detailed understanding of the dynamics of SISP than has previously
been offered. Moreover, investigators can apply its research techniques in other
contexts where they want to examine relationships among constructs that are actually
latent variables. Using the techniques, they no longer must assume that the constructs
are directly observed and measured without error.
For researchers in the problems of SISP, the study provides a shorter, eighteen-item
scale. This could be used in lieu of the forty-nine-item scale.
In addition, the study offers several other suggestions for future research. For
example, the results showed that problems with the Organization, Cost, Hardware,
and Database account for about 56 percent of the variance of the problems in
Implementation. Although the main purpose of causal analysis is to determine the
existence and magnitude of the hypothesized effects rather than to explain the
variance, the variance reinforces the importance ofthe factors in the model.
It also raises questions, however, about other factors that may affect Implementation.
Perhaps changes in extemal environmental factors (such as competitors, customers,
govemment, and technology) after the creation of the plan, yet before its implementation,
may cause the plan to be undeserving of top management support (no. 16 in F2
in Table 2), the output document to be not very useful (no. 41 in F2), further analysis
to be required (no. 19 in F2), and the output to be inconsistent with top management's
expectations (no. 15 in F2). Moreover, business priorities can change due not only to
this environmental turbulence but also to political change within the organization.
Preliminary efforts have described the impact ofthe environment on the management
of information systems and the resulting shifts in applications priorities [42]. However,
a further understanding of these issues is clearly needed.
The results of this research confirm the importance of variables that have been the
object of previous research. For example, item no. 13 in the Organization (Fl), user
involvement [30], was a key variable throughout the factor analysis, reliability
assessment, and causal analysis. This suggests that future research should continue to
investigate it as well as variables associated with the other items that played an
important role in the model.
Also, future research might use some altemative measures of SISP success. Satisfaction
of the planner was used in the reliability assessment of the five factors. Perhaps
top management satisfaction, user satisfaction, or even adherence to the long-range
plan might serve in such a capacity in future studies. The identification of such a
variable may be a significant researeh effort in itself.
Similarly, future research should study the entire SISP process from the perspective
of general and functional management. The current research studied the views of
information systems planners. While their perspective is important for both general
management and information systems management, other views could prove invaluable.
Future research should also validate the findings of this study by focusing on the
attributes of successful SISP endeavors rather than on the problems of SISP. In
doing so, researchers might use a larger sample. They could also investigate ongoing
SISP studies longitudinally, rather than planners' recollections and impressions of
their past studies.
Finally, future research might try to better understand the circumstances under which
specific factors cause differing degrees of problems. This might help researchers
discover and understand the constructive actions that information systems planners
take to reduce the severity of the problems, improve SISP methodologies, and thus
realize the potential contribution of infonnation systems to organizations.