THE IMPACT OF EXECUTIVE INFORMATION-SYSTEMS ON ORGANIZATIONAL DESIGN,INTELLIGENCE, AND DECISION-MAKING

Managerial decision making is regarded as among the most important fun ctions of senior managers. The presence of easily accessible, reliable information contributes to effective decision making. Sources of info rmation may be oral, written, or computer-based. The computer-based in formation sources remain the least studied in the context of executive decision making because executives have tended to use other managers and their own intuition as their primary information sources. Recently though, computer-based information systems directly tailored for use by executives have begun to be implemented within organizations. Such systems, referred to as Executive Information Systems, may help execut ives make faster and higher quality decisions, an increasingly importa nt requirement for executives given such trends as globalization and h eightened competition. This study uses survey responses of 91 high lev el managers to empirically examine the relationship of executive infor mation system use by managers with decision making speed, problem iden tification speed, information availability, and the involvement of sub ordinates in decision making. The study found that when used frequentl y and over time, executive information systems are positively related to perceived problem identification and decision making speed for seni or and middle managers. Whether such effects lead to higher quality de cisions are topics for further study. In addition, the frequency of us e of executive information systems is shown to be related to a perceiv ed increase in information availability although the length of time th e system is in use is not related to perceived information availabilit y. This suggests that the information needs of senior and middle manag ers is malleable and systems designed to support the decision making o f managers need to be flexible to adapt to changing information needs. Lastly, the study found that the use of executive information systems does not reduce the reliance of senior or middle managers on their su bordinates to help in decision making. This may be because the involve ment of subordinates does not necessarily connote a consistent positiv e or negative behavior among American managers, whereas speed and info rmation are consistently considered as positive. The implications of t he results for a previously developed theory of the effects of advance d information technology on organizational design, intelligence, and d ecision making are discussed.