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INTRODUCTION
For many IS executives, strategic information systems planning (SISP) continues to be a critical issue.(1) It is also reportedly the top IS concern of chief executives (Moynihan, 1990). At the same time, it is almost axiomatic that information systems management be based on SISP (Synott and Gruber, 1982). Furthermore, as investment in information technology has been promoted to both support business strategy or create strategic options (Earl, 1988; Henderson and Venkatraman, 1989), an "industry" of SISP has grown as IT manufacturers and management consultants have developed methodologies and techniques. Thus, SISP appears to be a rich and important activity for researchers. So far, researchers have provided surveys of practice and problems, models and frameworks for theory-building, and propositions and methods to put into action.(2) The literature recommends that SISP target the following areas:
* Aligning investment in IS with business goals
* Exploiting IT for competitive advantage
* Directing efficient and effective management of IS resources
* Developing technology policies and architectures
It has been suggested (Earl, 1989) that the first two areas are concerned with information systems strategy, the third with information management strategy, and the fourth with information technology strategy. In survey-based research to date, it is usually the first two areas that dominate. Indeed, SISP has been defined in this light (Lederer and Sethi, 1988) as "the process of deciding the objectives for organizational computing and identifying potential computer applications which the organization should implement" (p. 445). This definition was used in our investigation of SISP activity in 27 United Kingdom-based companies.
Calls have been made recently for better understanding of strategic planning in general, including SISP, and especially for studies of actual planning behavior in organizations (Boynton and Zmud, 1987; Henderson and Sifonis, 1988). As doubts continue to be raised about the payoff of IT, it does seem important to examine the reality of generally accepted IS management practices such as SISP. Thus, in this investigation we used field studies to capture the experiences of large companies that had attempted some degree of formal IS planning.(3)
We were also interested as to whether any particular SISP techniques were more effective than others. This question proved difficult to answer, as discussed below, and is perhaps even irrelevant. Techniques were found to...