Strategic Information Systems Enabling Strategy-as-practice Under Uncertain Environments

Abstract

Recent research in the new era of strategic planning (SP) shows its ambivalent capacity for prescriptive rationality as a way for managing the creation of emerging and flexible strategies to deal with environmental turbulence. However, there is limited research on how this capacity can be developed, and even less on strategic planning as enabled by strategic information systems (SIS). Contingency and Practice theory were used to investigate how SIS enables SP effectiveness in practice, under the influence of environmental uncertainty, by applying PLS-PM statistical techniques to a sample of 139 companies. The study confirmed that SIS enhances SP effectiveness under different contingency levels of dynamism, heterogeneity and hostility. Results from post-analysis study show: (a) SIS demonstrated greater predictive power in strategy formulation and control and less emphasis on executing it; (b) SIS presented greater influence on SP effectiveness in environments with high heterogeneity; (c) companies showed greater emphasis on controlling and formulating strategy than executing it. The study contributed to understanding how SIS creates value via strategy-as-practice under environmental turbulence. JEL Classification Codes: L86, D83, L2.

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