Understanding the Determinants of the Reputation of Information Systems Departments
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Abstract
How well information systems are governed in an organization depends critically on the relationship between the IS department and other business units. Infrequent communication and a lack of shared knowledge between these groups have shown, for example, to lead to failed and abandoned projects. While IS-business relationships have been extensively studied at the individual level of analysis, little work has been done on group-level relationships. This is a significant issue, because relationships between individuals are influenced by the quality of the interaction between and within the organizational units they belong to. In addition, most studies have examined how these relationships affect the performance of the IS unit, but not the reputation of this unit in the organization. The reputation of the IS unit in an organization is worth studying because reputation is an indicator of its success in executing and supporting the organization’s strategy. Cognitive judgments of the IS unit’s influence also determine to some extent the level of resources provided to it for its operations. This study uses the concepts of leader-member exchange and team-member exchange to examine how relationships between IS and business units, and within IS units, can affect the performance and reputation of the IS unit. We develop a theoretical multi-level model and propose hypotheses which will be tested in the future.