A major issue facing managers of Information Systems organizations is the increasing pressure to demonstrate the business value of the firm' s investment in information technology. The working relationship between the IS group and other diverse organizational groups can have a major contribution to increasing IS performance. This paper explores the concept of shared knowledge between IS groups and their line customers as a contributor to IS performance. Shared knowledge is achieved through Ihe mechanisms of mutual trust and influence between these groups. The relationship of mutual trust, influence, and shared knowledge with IS performance is tested empirically using path analysis in a study of eighty-six IS organizations. The results of this study show that shared knowledge mediates the relationship between IS performance and trust and influence and that increasing levels of shared knowledge between IS and line groups leads to increased IS performance. Recommendations are given for ways managers can develop mutual trust and influence between these diverse groups, and therefore achieve higher levels of shared knowledge and IS performance.

As software development projects continue to be over budget and behind schedule, researchers continue to look for ways to improve the likelihood of project success. In this research we juxtapose two different views of what influences software development team performance during the requirements development phase. In an examination of 66 teams from 15 companies we found that team skill, managerial involvement, and little variance in team experience enable more effective team processes than do software development tools and methods. Further, we found that development teams exhibit both positive and negative boundary-spanning behaviors. Team members promote and champion their projects to the outside environment, which is considered valuable by project stakeholders. They also, however, guard themselves from their environments; keeping important information a secret from stakeholders negatively predicts performance.

We report results from a longitudinal study of information systems development (ISD) teams. We use data drawn from 60 ISD teams at 22 sites of 15 Fortune 500 organizations to explore variations in performance relative to these teams' social interactions. To do this, we characterize ISD as a form of new product development and focus on team-level social interactions with external stakeholders. Drawing on cluster analysis, we identify five patterns of team-level social interactions and the relationships of these patterns to a suite of objective and subjective measures of ISD performance. Analysis leads us to report three findings. First, data indicate that no one of the five identified patterns maximizes all performance measures. Second, data make clear that the most common approach to ISD is the least effective relative to our suite of performance measures. Third, data from this study show that early indications of ISD project success do not predict actual outcomes. These findings suggest two issues for research and practice. First, these findings indicate that varying patterns of social interactions lead to differences in ISD team performance. Second, the findings illustrate that singular measures of ISD performance are an oversimplification and that multiple measures of ISD performance are unlikely to agree.

Information technology is playing an increasingly integral role in the competitive strategies of many organizations. As this trend continues, it is not surprising that there is growing emphasis on the ability of organizations to plan, design and implement critical information systems. A major strategy to improve the effectiveness of these processes is the use of computer-based planning and design aids. However, there is little empirical evidence that using this technology provides a significant performance impact. One factor limiting research on the impact of technology on planning and design is the manner in which this technology has been conceptualized for measuring usage behavior. This research develops a functional model of I/S planning and design support technology that distinguishes three general functional dimensions: Production Technology, Coordination Technology and Organizational Technology. An empirical analysis is used to test the robustness of the proposed model and its ability to discriminate among current design aids in a meaningful way. Implications for the use of this model in the study of I/S planning and design processes are discussed.