Executive Information System Failure: A New Zealand Case Study

There is little information available to assist practitioners regarding the question of how to minimize the risk of executive information system (EIS) failure (e.g. Watson et al., 1991; Zmud, 1993). A system that provides on-line, summarized and graphical information about a business is desired by many decision makers, but attempts to deliver this type of system have often proved dif® cult (Reck and Hall, 1986; Volonino and Robinson, 1990, Watson et al., 1992). Research into the implementation of EIS in the 1980s showed that these systems were expensive to develop and required continual resources to maintain (Watson, 1992). They were designed mainly for larger organizations with mainframe information systems (IS) and most of the development time went into creating sophisticated graphical interfaces. Since then information technology (IT) has advanced and practitioners and executives are more informed about the nature and use of technology. Research is therefore required to see whether EIS are still high risk systems and if so in what circumstances. Earlier researchers provided a list of factors to take into consideration when implementing an EIS to ensure its success, yet systems still failed even though these factors were addressed. It is possible that other issues may have a bigger in ̄ uence on the success of EIS than was ® rst envisaged. Theoretical framework