RESOURCE CONSTRAINTS IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT: A LAND MANAGEMENT CASE STUDY

Network analysis of information systems management is the focus of this study. Its premise is that resource scarcity will force public sector organizations to integrate and coordinate systems development tasks with other agencies in ways that will give rise to networked interorganizational capabilities. Emphasis is placed on the effect that the joint adoption by public organizations of advanced information technologies is likely to have on existing approaches to managerial decision making, particularly in the federal bureaucracy. Information models of organization suggest that expanded information processing capacity can correspondingly increase institutional capability and responsiveness, although information technology (IT) also tends to generate increasingly complex internal and external demands on the information management capacities of organizations.1] Malone, T. W. and Crowston, K. 1994. The Interdisciplinary Study of Co-ordination. ACM Computer Surveys, 26(Spring): 87–119. Crossref] , Google Scholar] In interorganizational domains, a history of technical collaboration, along with shared missionx and common interests, conditions the process of adoption of information systems. A case study of a partnership between the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service in an effort at the joint development of a major computer information system will indicate the need for new approaches to the management and evaluation of coordinated IT projects capable of sustaining organizational innovation. One important issue is the relationship between the cultures and practices of emergent team-led management and established centrally directive management.

An assessment of the BLM Automated Land and Mineral Records System (ALMRS) indicates that, as adversity and uncertainty increase, institutional capacity and efficacy may also increase proportionally, and resource constraint might actually prompt the development of new organizational capabilities. For this somewhat paradoxical outcome to obtain, however, public agencies must address information demands flexibly, adaptively, and cooperatively, modifying their management systems in complementary ways. They can, for instance, tackle the high costs of information system deployment by sharing expertise through interorganizational networks of user-experts. However, information systems innovation requires the corresponding development of organizational and managerial capabilities. A movement toward decentralization and teamwork may be expected to require new, integrative, forms of information systems management, and political management skills need to be brought into play to stave off external threats long enough for these changes to occur. Absent these enabling conditions, fledgling or even established team approaches to information systems development may be in jeopardy.