Control Mechanisms and Senior Management Commitment in Shaping the Performance of Strategic Information Systems Projects: A Resource Dependence Perspective

Abstract:

Successfully controlling strategic information systems (IS) projects in realizing strategic goals is a primary concern for managers. However, the effectiveness of control may vary with the organizational resources, such as senior management commitment. Using a theoretical lens of resource dependence, this article investigates the mechanism of how senior management commitment, a critical organizational resource, changes the influences of four types of control on the performance of strategic IS projects. Based on a pairwise survey on user liaisons and project managers from 155 strategic IS projects, we discover that behavior control and self-control are effective in improving strategic performance contrary to outcome and clan control. However, such effects are differentially changed by senior management commitment, which increases the effectiveness of outcome and clan control but weakens that of self-control. Thus, senior management commitment has dual roles toward strategic performance in either facilitating or deteriorating control effectiveness. Our findings contribute to control-based theory, resource dependence theory, strategic IS project, and management commitment literature by identifying the interactive effect of senior management commitment and control. Our findings also provide practical insights into how managers substantially control and support strategic IS projects.

Index Terms：

Control mechanism, project management, resource dependence theory, senior management commitment, strategic information systems (IS).

原文链接：https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9935780