User Involvement in System Design : An Empirical Test of Alternative Approaches

'User involvement' in the development of informationsystems is often assumed to be key to successfulimplementation. However, few empirical studies have clearlydemonstrated a relationship between user involvement and twokey indicators of system success: system usage and userinformation satisfaction. The authors test the generalhypothesis that user involvement is a more complex conceptthan previous research would indicate; there are differenttypes of involvement and different stages in the systemdevelopment life cycle in which users may become involved.In a study of 83 users and 23 information systems managersin 23 companies, they found that only the activity of usersign-offs on project phases had a significant correlationwith both user information satisfaction and satisfaction with the information systems group. The authors concludethat there is a complex relationship between the type anddegree of user involvement and other organizational andindividual factors; this relationship affects both usersatisfaction with and usage of the resulting systems. Somesuggestions for further research taking this complexity intoaccount are given