User participation in information systems development is considered the key to system success in organizations. The empirical evidence, however, does not support this. A review of the literature suggests that one critical weakness in empirical investigations is inadequacy of operational measures of participation to gauge user influence on system design. Furthermore, there is also a growing consensus that the contradictory evidence may be due to a contingent, rather than a direct, relationship between participation and system success. This conception asserts that the outcome of user participation may depend on various contextual variables.
One variable in particular users' system-related functional expertise
is believed to moderate the outcome of participation. This paper
derives the contingent effect of user expertise and reports the
results of a controlled laboratory experiment and a field survey
conducted to test it. The data suggest that users who perceive
themselves as functional experts, relative to others, are unlikely
to accept a system unless they exerted a substantive influence
on its design. On the other hand, users who perceive themselves
as functional nonexperts, relative to others, are likely to accept
a system regardless of the extent of their influence on its design.
This finding suggests user expertise as a useful criterion for
selecting participants to serve on design teams and for determining
the appropriate extent of a participant user's influence on system
design.
Key words and phrases: , demand for MIS professionals design teams , system acceptance , system development , system success , user participation