THE USE OF SPREADSHEETS IN ORGANIZATIONS - DETERMINANTS AND CONSEQUENCES

Spreadsheets have long been recognized as important tools for end-user computing. This research explores their use within business organizat ions. A survey was carried out to investigate the relationships among tasks, spreadsheet proficiency, usage, and satisfaction. The results s uggested that the spreadsheet proficiency can have a greater impact on the tasks than the task can have on the spreadsheet proficiency. It w as also found that spreadsheet users often do not use many of the comm only available spreadsheet features, and they do not appear inclined t o use other software packages for their tasks, even if these packages might be more suitable. The proficiency of the spreadsheet users was n ot found to be related to the importance of the decisions being taken as a result of the spreadsheet analyses.