Journal of Management Information Systems

Volume 14 Number 1 1997 pp. 3-7

Editorial Introduction

Zwass, Vladimir

ABSTRACT:

BUSINESS REENGINEERING, AND BUSINESS PROCESS REDESIGN AND IMPROVEMENT are, respectively, more or less radical elements of business process change enabled by information technology. Two years ago, Varun Grover and William Kettinger guest-edited a Special Section of this Journal, investigating the theory of business process change. Fittingly, they now present a Special Section of five papers that analyze the actual impact of the change as experienced by the changing organizations. I will not try to preempt here the Guest Editors and the authors in presenting to you the many lessons they will help you learn.

In the first paper of the general section, Alan R. Dennis, Craig K. Tyran, Douglas R. Vogel, and Jay F. Nunamaker, Jr., examine the application of a widely used group support system (GSS) to strategic planning, based on the first-use experience by thirty firms. The authors study the impact of four GSS dimensions, two of them task-related and two process-related, on the three sets of capabilities germane to the success of strategic planning. The authors report the success factors in the use of GSS for strategic planning, which will serve the many firms that will no doubt pursue such use in the future. They also outline the emerging research issues, notably stemming from the mutual influences between the evolving managerial processes and the evolution of information technology that supports communications and organizational memory.

The next paper addresses strategic planning issues as well. Thompson S.H. Teo and William R. King study the characteristics of the four types of integration between business planning and information systems planning. The model the authors propose and investigate demonstrates an evolution through these types as the stages on the road to full integration. The authors also identify the contingency factors of the progress, with the business savvy of the top MIS executive heading the list.

Two subsequent papers concentrate on information technology. Data modeling, or logical design, with existing methods (such as entity-relationship diagramming) presents difficulties to less experienced designers. Dinesh Batra offers a method for data modeling based on the set of the application's user views, readily available from its inputs (e.g., forms) and outputs (e.g., reports). A theoretical foundation for the relatively simple yet rigorous method is offered, showing that it leads to a normalized solution.

Information systems would appear to be ideally suited to assist an organization during a crisis, when a prompt and informed response is of the utmost importance and when the entire organization needs to speak in a single voice. Yet such systems are not available. Joanne Hale, in the final paper in this issue, offers a layered architecture for a distributed crisis-response information system. The system makes it possible to bring to bear the organizational memory of previous relevant experiences and enables the appropriate group processes within the firm.

As we enter the fourteenth year of this Journal's publication, I once again thank the Editorial Board, authors, readers, and the entire MIS community for their contributions and support. As always, it is a special privilege and pleasure to thank the Journal's reviewers, the primary guarantors of its quality.

These are the reviewers of the Journal of Management Information Systems:

Tarek K. Abdel-Hamid

Mark Ackerman

Ritu Agarwal

Rakesh Agrawal

Pervaiz Alam

Donald L. Amoroso

Joon An

Urton Anderson

Lynda M. Applegate

Gad Ariav

Yiorgos D. Athanassatos

Paul Attewell

Barbro Back

Yannis Bakos

P.R. Balasubramanian

Dirk Baldwin

Rajiv D. Banker

A. James Baroody, Jr.

Dinesh Batra

Salvatore Belardo

Michael Benaroch

Francois Bergeron

David Bodoff

Bijoy Bordoloi

Bruce E. Breeding

Carol V. Brown

Robert M. Brown

Terry A. Byrd

Anthony G. Cahill

Edward G. Cale, Jr.

John V. Carlis

Judith Carlisle

Erran Carmel

Houston H. Carr

William J. Carroll

Robert P. Cerveny

Patrick Chau

Hong-Mei Chen

Minder Chen

Ye-Sho Chen

Hsing Kenneth Cheng

Robert T.H. Chi

Roger Chiang

William C. Chismar

Jong-min Choe

Joobin Choobineh

Danial Clapper

Jon D. Clark

Roger Clarke

Sue Conger

Timothy P. Cronan

David C. Croson

Paul Cule

Robert M. Daniels, Jr.

Ronald Dattero

Prabu Davamanirajan

Donald L. Davis

Sandra Dewitz

Ali Dogramaci

Brian L. Dos Santos

Peter Duchessi

Kathie Duliba

Omar A. El Sawy

Gregg Elofson

Hyun B. Eom

Mary Helen Fagan

Jesus Favela

Steven Feiner

Frederick Ferront

Kirk Fiedler

Michael Flam

Steven W. Floyd

Peter Foltz

Edward Fox

Nelson Fraiman

Richard Furuta

Michael J. Gallivan

Edward J. Garrity

Amy W. Gatian

Bezalel Gavish

Erol Gelenbe

Mark Ginsburg

Bonnie Glassberg

Janis L. Gogan

David K. Goldstein

Jerry Golub

Martin D. Goslar

Michael Goul

Paul Gray

Gary I. Green

Saul Greenberg

Robert K. Griffin

Michael D. Grigoriades

Varun Grover

Tor Guimaraes

Jatinder N.D. Gupta

Gary Hackbarth

Joanne E. Hale

Jacob Hagouel

Il-Horn Hann

Warren Harrison

Glenda Hayes

Stephen Hayne

Krishna Hegde

James O. Hicks, Jr.

Lorin Hitt

Richard Hoffman

Tony Holden

Cary T. Hughes

E. Gerald Hurst

Tomasz Imielinski

Gretchen I. Irwin

Thomas Isakowitz

Bharat A. Jain

Marius A. Janson

Matthias Jarke

Per V. Jenster

Hardeep Johar

Linda Ellis Johnson

Stef Joosten

Kailash Joshi

Charles Kacmar

Ajit Kambil

Jahangir Karimi

Michael Kattan

Robert J. Kauffman

Mark Keil

Robert T. Keim

Chris Kemerer

Julie E. Kendall

Omar E.M. Khalil

Melody Y. Kiang

Gary Klein

Henry Kon

Kenneth A. Kozar

Uday Kulkarni

Rachna Kumar

Ram Kumar

Mary C. Lacity

Laura Lally

Gwynne Larsen

Tor J. Larsen

Steven M. Lathrop

Hon-Shiang Lau

Ho Geun Lee

Jungwoo Lee

Ronald M. Lee

Dorothy Leidner

Richard Leifer

Mary Jane Lenard

Hugo Levecq

Ting-Peng Liang

Paul S. Licker

Jack M. Ligon

Yihwa Irene Liou

Astrid Lipp

Geoffrey Liu

Gary A. Lombardo

Henry Lucas

William McCarthy

Roy McKelvey

Ephraim R. McLean

Poppy L. McLeod

R. Madhavan

Simha R. Magal

Radha K. Mahapatra

Mo A. Mahmood

David Maier

Michael Mannino

Ji-Ye Mao

Salvatore T. March

Anne P. Massey

Charles H. Mawhinney

Roberto J. Mejias

Robert Minch

Shaila Miranda

Rajesh Mirani

William H. Money

Ali R. Montazemi

Ajay S. Mookerjee

Scott Moore

Kathleen Mykytyn

Peter P. Mykytyn, Jr.

Barin N. Nag

Murli Nagasundaram

R. Ryan Nelson

Sarma Nidumolu

Rosalie Ocker

Lorne Olfman

James Oliver

Levent Orman

Richard Orwig

Lee Papayanopoulos

Diane Parente

Kenneth Peffers

Norman Pendegraft

Mark Pendergast

Roger A. Pick

Alain Pinsonneault

Leo L. Pipino

Steven Poltrock

Gerald Post

Jayesh Prasad

G. Premkumar

Sandeep Purao

S. Raghunathan

T.S. Raghunathan

Arik Ragowsky

Arun Rai

Rex Kelly Rainer, Jr.

Sudha Ram

K.S. Raman

B. Ramesh

Richard G. Ramirez

Renu Ramnarayanan

H.R. Rao

R. Ravichandran

Sury Ravindran

Louis Raymond

Paul Resnick

William B. Richmond

Frederick Riggins

Daniel Robey

Michael C. Row

David Rozenshtein

David L. Russell

Young U. Ryu

Timo Saarinen

Rajiv Sabherwal

Sharon Salveter

G. Lawrence Sanders

Radhika Santhanam

John Satzinger

Carol Saunders

Naveed Saleem

George Schell

Irmtraud S. Seeborg

Arie Segev

Arun Sen

Kenneth C. Sevcik

Dennis G. Severance

Theresa M. Shaft

Barry Shane

Ben Shao

Steven Sheetz

Jim Sheffield

Olivia Sheng

Michael Shields

J.P. Shim

Chris Shull

Mark S. Silver

Atish P. Sinha

Peggy C. Smith

Charles A. Snyder

Eric W. Stein

John M. Stevens

Veda Storey

Ashok Subramanian

Girish Subramanian

Ramesh Subramanian

Ephraim Sudit

Robert T. Sumichrast

Shankar Sunarajan

Julius Surkis

Edward J. Szewczak

Kar Yan Tam

Bernard C.Y. Tan

Mohan R. Tanniru

David P. Tegarden

James T.C. Teng

Hock-Hai Teo

Thompson Teo

Matthew Thatcher

Ron Thompson

James Y.L. Thong

John Tillquist

Leon van der Torre

Jonathan K. Trower

Duane Truex

Jon A. Turner

Brad Tuttle

N.S. Umanath

Ari Vepsalainen

Boris S. Veroy

Iris Vessey

Ajay Vinze

Eric Wang

Jason Wang

Michael S. Wang

Y. Richard Wang

Yu-ming Wang

Carol Watson

Richard Watson

Aaron Watters

Bruce Weber

Peter Weill

Jay-Louise Weldon

Charles E. Wells

Larry West

J. Christopher Westland

Seungjin Whang

Michael E. Whitman

George Widmeyer

Uffe Wiil

Kristoff K. Wolyniec

Bill Wooldridge

Hans Wortmann

Hao Xialong

Surya B. Yadav

Beck Yang

Chee Sing Yap

Evangelos Yfantis

Ilze Zigurs

Moshe Zviran

VLADIMIR ZWASS

Editor-in-Chief