From Control to Consultation: An Organizational DSS for the Inspector Work

Abstract It has been proposed that the structure for an organization is dependent on its strategy; strategy drives the structure. On the other hand strategy attempts to align an organization with its environment and a change in strategy requires a change in administrative structure and also in formal information systems (IS). Rockart and Scott-Morton have proposed that information technology (IT) may have an essential role in organizational change. However, only a few researchers have studied MIS/DSS in the context of organizational development. If an organizational imperative or even emergent perspective is adopted, it leads to the consideration of the use of IT in the context of organization development (OD). At present organizations are developing their strategies for the 1990's which demand structural changes or at least development of the organization's control and decision making processes. The essential point is that the changes also affect the information needs of organizational actors. Thus, organizational change quite often requires the existing IS to be reconstructed or even replaced. For MIS/DSS development the establishment of new information channels offers a challenging task. In this study a process approach to the analysis of the relationship of OD and MIS/DSS development is applied. The organizational change forces in a Finnish public sector organization is observed in a longitudinal manner. In the first phase of this study the authors' role was to assist in aligning the planning of a single information system — Workplace Information System (WIS) — with other organizational change processes. Empirical data was gathered through action research. One of the most important findings of this study was that new WIS options were created through organizational learning. Both the researchers and organizational actors learned to focus on WIS as an opportunity for organizational change. Organizational change should be explicated or at least carefully discussed during the IS development process.