Information Systems Objectives: Effects of Experience, Position Level, and Education on Developers

Information Systems (IS) have become critical for redesigning organizational processes, and as a result, the nature of the roles and duties of IS professionals have changed. It has become increasingly important for IS professionals to understand how the objectives of an IS relate to the organizational goals. It has been suggested that the traditional views of IS developers which emphasizes a technical orientation may be one of the factors contributing to the frequent failure of IS to meet their expectations. Thus, the purpose of the present study was to provide an updated view of how IS developers perceive the importance of different types of IS objectives. In the current investigation, the objectives of an IS were classified at the (1) System, (2) User, (3) Organizational, or (4) Strategic level and by the short-term or long-term perceived benefits. The results demonstrated that IS developers in general view objectives at the system and organizational level as more important than objectives associated with the user and strategic levels. The IS developers also viewed the short-term goals as significantly more important than the long-term goals. The views of IS developers were not affected by the amount of experience working in the IS field. However, the results indicated that IS developers with a higher organizational position tended to view the long-term benefits as more important than did developers with a lower position in the organization. In addition, the developer’s level of education was associated with an increase in the perceived importance of objectives at the user and the organizational level.