What Chief Executives and Senior Managers Want From Their IT Departments

The purpose of this field study was to learn more about the experiences of managers in introducing information technology in organizations. Three viewpoints were chosen: the chief executive officer, the senior functional manager and the IT manager. It was hoped that the following questions would be answered: Do these three groups of managers experience the same issues? If so, in what ways do they view these issues differently? Do managers in Ireland experience the same issues as their counterparts in the United States? Data were gathered through personal interviews with managers in 49 organizations in Ireland. The firms represented a wide range of industrial sectors. The three groups of managers all frequently raised the same set of eleven organizational issues but had major differences in perspective on a number of these issues. IT managers identified a further six issues, which are mainly technical in nature. A comparison of these findings with those of earlier studies suggests that U.S. and Irish managers see things much the same way. These findings should be of practical value for IT planning and review exercises and for organizational development programs.