Executive Information Systems Use in Organizational Contexts: Understanding the User Behavior

Executive Information Systems (EIS) are designed to enhance the managerial roles of top-level managers in organizations. Despite reports of the growing popularity of EIS, there are reports of low usage of these systems that, in part, contributes to their failures in organizations. Majority of prior EIS research has focused on documenting the features, benefits, development methodologies, and implementation of the systems. Regrettably, there are very few studies addressing the problem of low EIS usage. This paper reports on a research in progress on the use of EIS in organizational settings. The primary focus of the research is to investigate factors that explain users' behavior towards using EIS. It is also aimed at identifying the relative importance of these factors that determine the use of EIS. Preliminary results are reported below. In the context of this paper, an EIS is defined as: “A computer-based information system designed to aid top-level managers in organizations in performing their managerial roles”.