A Case for Auditing Strategic Information Systems

Business strategy represents the choice of how to compete for competitive advantage (Porter, 1980, Porter, 1985). And Strategic Information Systems (SIS) shape (Rackoff et al., 1985, Wiseman, 1985) and enable (Bensaou and Venkatraman, 1995) that business strategy. SIS has been the focus of a large body of research and anecdotal descriptions (Chan and Huff, 1992, Porter and Millar, 1985, Wiseman, 1985, Ghosh, 1998, Magretta, 1998, Shapiro and Varian, 1999). There may be as few as 1.5 thousand PhD degree-holding researchers in Management Information Systems or Business Data Processing fields, while we may place the number of accountants and auditors (including Certified Information Systems Auditors or CISAs) closer to 1.2 million. In order to determine whether specific configurations of information technology reasonably implement the premises of a firm’s competitive strategy, we think the SIS literature is mature enough to support CISAs compiling competent and sufficient evidential matter supporting certain frameworks, constructs and measurements described in the business strategy literature.