Frank Paul Morton (paul.morton9@gmail.com)
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, 2010
Abstract
The subject area of this thesis is Strategic Information Systems Planning (SISP), which is focussed on the role of information systems and information technology in organisations. SISP is seen as a strategic management activity and continues to be regarded as important. Although SISP originates in the private sector it has also been used in public sector organisations and the research for this thesis was carried out in government organisations. The literature shows both private and public sector organisations that have used SISP have had problematic experiences, which motivates the research question for this thesis: What are the causes of the outcomes of attempts to develop and implement strategic IS plans in organisations? The philosophical grounding of the thesis is the metatheory of Critical Realism. Critical Realism (CR) is useful for establishing causal explanations of phenomenon where closed system conditions (controlled experiments) are difficult to apply such as in organisational settings where complex interactions occur between people and technology and outcomes are not predictable. Accordingly, the purpose of the thesis is explanatory and descriptive and not to test specific propositions or hypotheses about SISP. Specifically, it is to generate theory, in the form of causal mechanisms by a process of retroducing the form and constitution of causes that could have produced events at the level of the empirical.
Methods
Qualitative: case studies