How Strategic are Information Systems in the Organizations at Kingdom of Bahrain

摘要

The Information Systems has the potential to be the major driver for economic wealth in the twenty first century. In addition to improving organizational efficiency and effectiveness, IS are playing more strategic roles in building and sustaining the organization competitive advantage. In fact, the IS core competencies are becoming increasingly important to implement competitive strategies. Therefore, organizations need to be prepared to integrate and incorporate IS in a strategic way to promote such competitiveness. Therefore, the aim of the current research is to help the organizations at Kingdom of Bahrain to identify to what extent their information systems are strategic and are impacting their competitive advantage. To achieve this aim, three objectives have been set: 1) identifying the IS stages of maturity in the organization, 2) investigating the relationship between the different IS stages of maturity and the adopted IS strategies and their impact on the organizational performance, and 3) examining the alignment between IS stages of maturity and the adopted IS strategies and the impact of this alignment on the organizational performance. IS strategy was assessed using Chan et al. (1997) STROIS dimensions and the descriptions of Nolan's (1979) IS stages of maturity model was adopted to determine the organizations level of IS maturity. The research findings revealed that most of the organizations at Kingdom of Bahrain are in the data administration and integration stage of maturity while none of the participated organizations were founded to be in the maturity stage. Moreover, the results show that there is an existence relationship between the IS stages of maturity and the adopted IS strategy and that both of them have a strong impact on the organizational performance. The results therefore, demonstrate that the organizations at Kingdom of Bahrain are utilizing IS effectively and reaping most of the benefits offered by their IS.