MIS key issues in Taiwan's enterprises

This article describes the MIS key issues in Taiwan's enterprises. A questionnaire survey by mail was conducted for data collection. The time-dependent results are approximately consistent with other local studies, though the MIS key issues list would change over the time. Four new issues out of the top 15 issues in 3-5 years fall into the category of network technology. The importance of end-user communications and end-user computing kept decreasing. Similar evolution was observed in the IS personnel and software productivity related issues, While the IS managers' role has gradually changed from internally focused to externally focused in Taiwan, our study reveals that IS managers do rate key issues differently across countries. As compared with those relevant studies performed in the US, Taiwan's IS managers currently rated much higher the internally focused and management-related issues, and the ratings of the current MIS key issues in Taiwan are quite similar with the US counterparts in 1980s. The impact of company's contextual factors on ratings of IS managers' key issues has also been confirmed, among which IT strategy is the most significant one. To delineate more clearly the relationships between the company's contextual variables and MIS key issues ratings, a descriptive model is currently under development. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.