MIS key issues in Taiwan's enterprises

This article describes the MIS key issues in Taiwan's enterprises. A questi onnaire survey by mail was conducted for data collection. The time-dependen t results are approximately consistent with other local studies, though the MIS key issues list would change over the time. Four new issues out of the top 15 issues in 3-5 years fall into the category of network technology. T he importance of end-user communications and end-user computing kept decrea sing. Similar evolution was observed in the IS personnel and software produ ctivity related issues, While the IS managers' role has gradually changed f rom internally focused to externally focused in Taiwan, our study reveals t hat IS managers do rate key issues differently across countries. As compare d with those relevant studies performed in the US, Taiwan's IS managers cur rently rated much higher the internally focused and management-related issu es, and the ratings of the current MIS key issues in Taiwan are quite simil ar with the US counterparts in 1980s. The impact of company's contextual fa ctors on ratings of IS managers' key issues has also been confirmed, among which IT strategy is the most significant one. To delineate more clearly th e relationships between the company's contextual variables and MIS key issu es ratings, a descriptive model is currently under development. (C) 1999 El sevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.