User Participation, Management Support and System Types

This paper explores user participation in the systems development process and examines this variable in relation to the type of system under development. Prior user participation research has not shown conclusive support for its impact on system success. Ives and Olson 1984 have suggested that much of the prior research on user involvement/participation has not been strongly grounded in theory. Using Simon's 1965 model of decision-making together with Zmud's 1983 typology of systems, it is hypothesized that user participation's impact on perceived usefulness should be greater for the more unstructured non-programmed decision-based systems than for transaction processing systems. This paper thus tests for moderating influences by system type. This study provides evidence that system type or problem type is an important moderating variable between user participation and perceived usefulness.