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