The concept of contingency beyond "It depends": illustrations from IS research stream

With the advent of the widely heralded "new economy", organizations are undergoing profound changes. Interestingly, information systems/information technology (IS/IT) has emerged as the vehicle for launching new organizational forms so that market forces can be effectively managed to yield favorable business solutions. A critical issue for managers to tackle in this environment is the core idea of fit among organizational domains in order to optimize performance. The role of academics in this endeavor is to clarify the notion of fit conceptually as well as methodologically. This paper synthesizes alternative concepts of fit starting from congruence and contingency, and attempts to clarify the enduring concept of contingency beyond the common sense notion of "It depends". Then it demonstrates the enriching value of the principles advocated in this paper by incorporating these principles in a selected set of prior empirical work in IS. Finally, a methodological enhancement to contingency analysis is proposed-an alternate solution to the systems approach to fit. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.