Aligning business and information systems thinking: a cognitive approach

Business-information systems (IS) alignment has become an important strategic imperative for organizations competing in the global economy. Recent research (Reich and Benbasat [56]) indicates that building a shared understanding between business and IS executives is one way of strengthening this alignment. This paper describes a study that examines the cognitive basis of shared understanding between business and IS executives. Using Personal Construct Theory (Kelly [36]), this study uses cognitive mapping techniques to explore the commonal-ities and individualities in the cognition between these executives. Eighty business and IS executives in six companies participated in this study. The results indicate that a higher level of cognitive commonality is positively related to a higher level of business-IS alignment. This is supported by findings that greater diversity in cognitive structure and cognitive content of business and IS executives coincide with a lower level of alignment. Implications for practitioners and researchers are discussed

The Impact of Analyst-User Cognitive Style Differences on User Satisfaction

This study explored the relationship between user satisfaction and cognitive style as applied to users and systems analysts over the time of system usage. Based on a sample of 62 ‘usersystems’ this study found that the absolute differential in analyst-user cognitive style, or cognitive gap, generally impacts user satisfaction negatively throughout the period of system usage. However, this effect was found to be only particularly strong at two stages of system use; in the third and twenty-first months of system usage. It is thus suggested that analysts should be allocated to users with similar cognitive styles, as one means of optimizing user satisfaction during system usage. Also, that if this precaution is not taken, the system is most likely to stall during the third and twenty-first months of usage. This study thus has important implications for IS team choice during system usage, as well as for system development and maintenance. The results are discussed and conclusions are drawn

The S-Statistic: a measure of user satisfaction based on Herzberg’s theory of motivation

This study describes the development and testing of a new instrument to measure user satisfaction. We have called this the System Satisfaction Schedule (SSS), and the associated statistic, S. In essence, this instrument is based on user-generated complaints. The findings suggest that the SSS is a viable instrument for measuring user satisfaction, despite the lack of positive factors assessed. Other factor-based instruments may be unreliable, since they can omit factors that are important to the user, or include factors which are of no significance to the user. The SSS avoids this difficulty by rating factors which are almost entirely user-generated

GSS for Multi-Organizational Collaboration: Reflections on Process and Content

Multi-organizational collaboration has become the norm for modern organizations as they seek to survive and prosper in increasingly turbulent times. These collaborations can take many forms, but face problems due to different management styles, different cultures, and different operating modes of the participant organizations. These differences usually cause difficulties for the multi-organizational teams that are set up to make the collaboration operational. Group Support Systems (GSSs) is one possible way of supporting these multi-organization collaboration teams (MCTs). This paper builds and describes a conceptual framework that highlights the critical characteristics of these teams and how GSS might support their activities. The framework is based on a detailed analysis of three case studies using three different GSSs