Critical success factors revisited: success and failure cases of information systems for senior executives

The literature suggests the existence of critical success factors (CSFs) fo r the development of information systems that support senior executives. Ou r study of six organizations gives evidence for this notion of CSFs. The st udy further shows an interesting pattern, namely that companies either "get it right", and essentially succeed on all CSFs, or "get it completely wron g", that is, fall short on each of the CSFs. Among the six cases for which data were collected through in-depth interviews with company executives, th ree organizations seemed to manage all the CSFs properly, while two others managed all CSFs poorly. Only one organization showed a mixed scorecard, ma naging some factors well and some not so well. At the completion of the stu dy, this organization could neither be judged as a success, nor as a failur e. This dichotomy between success and failure cases suggests the existence of an even smaller set of "meta-success" factors. Based on our findings, we speculate that these "meta-success" factors are "championship", "availabil ity of resources", and "link to organization objectives". (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.