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108 Erwin and Averweg
1995). For organizations to succeed in the current business environment, it is
important to develop policies to create an environment conducive to technological
innovation (Basu et al., 2000). This entails the need to prioritize available resources
to facilitate the development of implementation of new ideas and technologies (Lai
et al., 1993). The continued challenge remains in terms of ensuring adaptability and
flexibility of information interfaces - both internally and externally - required for
coping with dynamically changing business and competitive environments (Malhotra,
2001). As Mintzberg (1973) noted three decades ago, a manager performs several
roles in which the exchange and access to information is a critical aspect. Executives
(as most people) nowadays have an increased computing literacy and can
confidently locate online information due to extensive personal use of the Web - a
knowledge that is transferred to their business setting (Basu et al., 2000).
In research by Basu et al. (2000), traditional EIS saw limited diffusion within
the organization from the late 1980s to early or mid-1990s. In some instances, only
a few executives actually used the system. In other instances, more users were
logged but only on a small percentage of the system’s functions. The primary
reasons cited were that the system was too hard to use or had little added value for
the executive. Actual benefits were not aligned with high development costs.
During this period, globalization was increasing the expanse of business along
with the need for more collaboration and communication. Concurrent with these
conditions, Internet technologies began to emerge. Once the infrastructure for
Internet access existed, it was a small step to apply the technology to internal
applications. Nowadays, executives can confidently locate online information due
to extensive personal use of the Web. Furthermore vendors of decision support
software see a larger market for products that provide OLAP, spreadsheet-type
capabilities and Web-based solutions (Gray & Watson, 1998).
With the demise of early EIS, in the early to mid-1990s some organizations
surveyed (Basu et al., 2000) consciously discontinued these systems after conducting
some level of value-based analysis. Other organizations gradually migrated to
intranet applications such as groupware, database querying, electronic calendars
and scheduling. All organizations have browser-based intranets. The Web browser
has become ‘an almost universal interface’ for end-user access (Gray & Watson,
1998). In summary, the catalysts of change away from traditional EIS implementations
were as follows:
• systems difficult to use;
• high costs compared to value added;
• lack of needed information;
• dissatisfied executives;
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