The relationship between some decision and task environment characteristics and information systems effectiveness: empirical evidence from Egypt

Most, if not all, of the empirical evidence on information systems effectiveness and its associating factors is confiied to data tlom developed countries, in particukw tlom the U.S.A. The findings of such research cannot necessady be generalized to other environments where the srxial, economical, and cultural characteristics are ditferent. Such evidence needs to be validated using cross-cultural research. This paper reports on the results of a replicate research aimed at testing the relationship of decision unstructuredness, task environment dynamism, and Itask environment complexity to Mormation systems effectiveness, as measured by user satisfaction and information systems use, using data from Egypt. Data was collected from 120 managers in 22 Egyptian banks. Decision unstructuredness was found to associate negatively with system use. Task environment complexity was found to associate positively with user overall satisfaction. While such findings are beneficial to the Egyptian practitioners, tirther investigation of the factors believed to atTect systems effectiveness in other industries and other countries is warranted in order to further the generalizability of IS effectiveness research tindings. INTRODUCTION Information systems efl%ctiveness has been a critical issue for IS research since the 1970’s (e.g., Schultz and Slevin, 1975, Lucas, 1975a, 1975b, 1981; Raymond, 1985; Montazemi, 1988; Swanson, 1988; Lucas et al., 1990). Despite the realization of the importance ofl and consequently the investment in, information systems as a key Permission to make digital/hard copies of all or pan of this material for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that the copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage, the copyright notice, the title of the publication and its date appear, and notice is given that copyright is by permission of the ACM, Inc. To copy otherwise, to republish, to pow on servers or to rcdismibute 10 lists, requires specific permission and/or fee. SIGCPR/ SIGMIS ’96, Denver Colorado USA @ 1996 ACM 0-89791-782-0/96/04. $3.50 to the survival and growth of contemportny organizations, the potential benefits of such systems may not be filly realized. Intiormation systems may not be accepted and used by those individuals for whom the systems were deigned and implemented (e.g., Swanson, 1988; Bowen, 1986; Davis et al., 1989; Young, 1984). Unaccepted and/or unused systems are ineffective. Thrm, it is important to understand the factors tiecting intlormaltion systems effectiveness. Most, if not all, of the empirical evidence on information systems effectiveness and its associating factors, however, is cmtlned to data fhrn developed countries, particularly from the U.S.A. One may argue that the social and cultural characteristics c)f American organizations may difTer significantly from those of other organizations in other countries, particularly in developing countries. Thus, research findings obtainedl from organizations operating in western environment carnnot necessarily be generalized to other environments where the social, economical, and cultural characteristics can be tlmdamentally ditTerent. Hence, if the external validity, especially its international dimension (Aharoni and BurtoL 1994; Rosenzweig, 1994), of such evidence is to be strengthened, it needs to be validated using cross-cultural research. The objective of this paper is to report on the results of a replicate research testing the relationship of some user’s decisions and task environment characteristics to information systems etlmtiveness, as measured by user satisfaction and system usage, using data fkom Egypt. This research was conducted as part of a larger study to explore (1) the relationship of personal, situational, and task environment variables to information systems effectiveness in a group of Egyptian banks, and (2) the relationship between user satisfaction and system usage as two surrogate measures of itiormation systems effectiveness.