مدیریت سیستم های اطلاعاتی: دیدگاه از پژوهش حسابداری

This paper advances our knowledge of information systems (IS) management by applying ideas and insights from accounting. An integrative cost–benefit framework is developed and applied to four areas of research: chargeback, outsourcing, decision support, and business process re-engineering and improvement. We show that the accounting literature contributes significantly to scholarship on the management of IS.

Information systems (IS) are managed at various levels. Enterprise level decisions primarily deal mainly with allocation of resources. Functional level IS decisions include where and when to apply IT, and whether the application should be made or bought. A decision to “make” a new IT application internally will inevitably lead to the initiation of a project that must then be managed. Important issues related to each of the aforementioned decisions have been considered by both IS and accounting scholars. For example, a steady stream of IS research on outsourcing began to emerge after the landmark decision by Kodak to contract its IS management to IBM. Similarly, accounting research has examined the initial outsourcing decision. However, a review of the IS literature suggests that other management questions have been addressed inadequately, particularly those involving post-implementation decisions. We address these inadequacies directly by applying an accounting perspective to four specific areas important to both practitioners and researchers [32]: chargeback for IS services, post-contractual management of IS outsourcing, management decision support systems (DSS), and IT-enabled operational process improvement. The accounting perspective is relevant to many IS issues, but recent advances focus on decisions and management control issues after an IS has been implemented. As a result, we show how accounting insights can help the IS profession to manage: (i) the intangible aspects of IT projects, including risk assessment, control, and coordination; (ii) biases that are associated with DSS use, and (iii) the authority and incentive structure of the firm. The next section presents a conceptual framework, which highlights the overlap between IS and accounting research. We then consider each of the aforementioned areas in turn, to (1) summarize the IS literature, (2) specify how the accounting perspective can augment mainstream knowledge, and (3) identify key issues for further research.

We have applied an accounting perspective to four key areas of IS management: chargeback, outsourcing, DSS, and BPC. Table 2 summarizes the problems, antecedents, and contributions of the accounting literature to the areas.The four areas represent only part of the overlapping interests between accounting and IS researchers. Since their literatures offer complementary insights on how to manage IT, we encourage accounting and IS researchers to pool their knowledge in order to further advance IS management scholarship. We found that the existing IS chargeback literature encourages managers to consider outsourcing IS services. In contrast, accounting research highlights the tradeoff between user demand and IS support capacity. Both chargeback and outsourcing share the same conditions for IS success. Achieving this balance is important, but so is knowing when to tip the scale away from efficiency towards flexibility (and strategic value-adding activities). Tipping the scale in turn requires the use of alternative mechanisms to fill the chargeback void. Meanwhile, the focus of IS outsourcing research has been on the initial decision and the terms of outsourcing contract. The understanding of how to manage the post-contracting stages of outsourcing remains limited. Applying a relationship networking perspective may be helpful to examine non-market based relationships between organizations. Accounting measures in the post-contracting environment can provide signals that help to maintain the psychological contract and to strengthen relational ties between the contracting parties. With the outsourcing trend expected to continue, it is imperative to first understand its rationale – chargeback issues being one possibility – before trying to understand how it is to be managed or how to measure its effectiveness. Nevertheless, the measurement and control of IS activities, whether in-house or outsourced, will remain challenging due to their intangible nature and it is critical to determine the right balance of IT investment between tangibles and intangibles. The intangible nature of IT also affects how the benefits of IT for decision support and re-engineering are assessed. Understanding the lead-lag indicators in the organization's business model is a starting point for the design of DSS. Our review of accounting research on performance measurement showed how such indicators can be used to signal when an organization is benefiting from a new DSS. Ultimately, when a firm can measure the benefits of its DSS, it is better able to plan for investment that supports its continuing improvement. In contrast to the DSS, BPC involves a significant change in the organization and structuring of activities. As such there is potential for the firm to reconsider its authority and incentive structure to support the change. We found that accounting researchers have examined such components as a joint package that highlights the need to strike a balance between the delegation of authority, performance evaluation, and incentives. The opportunity to learn how the three components interact in supporting the transition process is yet to be fully explored in either accounting or IS research. For example, we perceive a need to restructure incentives and authority regimes to match the new, broader and more efficient channels of communication flows that are provided by IS. The notion of complementarities between these and other factors appears to be relevant to the successful implementation and use of IT.