MATCHING CLIENT SERVER PROCESSING ARCHITECTURES WITH INFORMATION-PROCESSING REQUIREMENTS - A CONTINGENCY STUDY/

The 1990s are witnessing the rapid growth of client/server (C/S) compu ting, but for an organization to benefit from a CIS model, it should e nsure that the processing architecture matches its information needs. Researchers have suggested that organizations moving to this model sho uld identify their information requirements, and then determine the ap propriate architectures to support them.This study utilizes informatio n processing theory to examine the match between an organization's inf ormation processing requirements and its C/S architectures. The indepe ndent variables in this study are task characteristics, and the proces sing architectures. The dependent variable is effectiveness. The data for this study was obtained from C/S managers and users in a variety o f industries, through a combination of archival data, telephone interv iews, and a mailed survey. It was analyzed using hierarchical regressi on. The results indicate that an appropriate match between task charac teristics and C/S processing architectures is an important determinant of system effectiveness. (C) 1998 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.