Comparison of the use and success of budgetary and schedule-based management information systems (MIS) in construction

In research from 1992, den Hertog & Wielinga asserted that the effectiveness and impact of production control systems were heavily dependent on the actual use of those systems, and not so much on their intrinsic characteristics. However, the authors' design did not seem to allow such a conclusion, as the systems studied were very similar. To test that assertion, a two-part research project was designed. Information systems were represented by Type of System, which might take the values "money-based", for budgetary control-type systems, and "time-based", for schedule-based systems. Their use was represented by Participation and by the Uses of Information, score-card, attention-directing, and problem-solving. Their benefits and side-effects were represented by four variables, including User Information Satisfaction, Frequency of Use of Information, and Propensity to Create Slack. Data were collected in five of Portugal's largest construction contractors. Interviews with the system managers provided the data about the Uses of Information. Most other data were collected through questionnaires administered to the contract managers using the information. The first part of the research project performed a "generalization and extension" of the original study's model, concerning the three relations between Type of System, Type of Use, and System Benefits. The three relations were supported by the data, although in the case of the relation between Type of Use and Benefits, support was limited to the combinations of variables involving either Participation or Satisfaction. These results helped in establishing a link between the initial conceptualization and this study's. The second part tested the contentious finding by means of a crucial proposition. This stated that the effect of type of use on accounting for systems' outcomes might be larger or smaller than the effect of the information system itself. It originated two hypotheses. The first involved Participation as a measure of Type of Use, and the tests showed its effect to be considerably larger than the effect of Type of System. In the second hypothesis, type of use was represented by the Uses of Information. Type of System was shown to be more important, or at least as much important, as Type of Use, effectively falsifying the contentious assertion. The conclusion is that the type, or characteristics of a system, may have effects larger, or smaller, than those of type of use.