The development of strategic information systems: some case studies and research proposals

The strategic potential of information systems (IS) is widely recognised. However, there is a need to understand better the process leading to strategic IS applications and the way in which it may be affected by the context. This paper presents four case studies of the decision making, design and development, and implementation processes leading to strategic, intra-organizational systems. These cases are used to develop a set of general and contingency propositions about the strategic IS development process. The general propositions represent a longitudinal model of the role of senior management during various phases of the process, while the contingency propositions relate the nature of the process to four contextual factors, namely the organization's size, environmental uncertainty, the sector to which the organization belongs, and the maturity of its IS function. These propositions should serve as a basis for future empirical research on strategic IS development.