An Empirical Investigation of Information Systems Departments' Configurations

摘要

This empirical study focuses on IS departments, investigates their configurations, and assesses their performance. It adopts the configurational approach to cluster IS departments based on their strategy and structure attributes. A nation-wide survey of 217 IS departments was conducted in Canadian business organizations. Cluster analysis was performed, which led to the emergence of three IS department configurations. The more strategy- and structure-oriented departments are, the higher their performance is. IS departments with a medium performance are the ones that focus more on their strategy than on their structure, whereas those who put more emphasis on their structure and less on their strategy achieve the lowest performance.