Life in the middle: An analysis of information centers from the perspective of their major stakeholders

✍ Scribed by Regina F. Bento

• Book ID: 103899270
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1996
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 693 KB
• Volume: 30
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0378-7206
• DOI: 10.1016/0378-7206(95)00051-8

✦ Synopsis

Information Centers (ICs), in their mission of supporting end-user computing, find themselves in the middle of two different constituencies, users and Information Systems (IS) managers. A conceptual model, based on role theory, is presented here to explore the special challenges of "life in the middle", such as different expectations about the roles that should be performed by IC professionals, different criteria for evaluating their performance, and different perceptions of their success. These special challenges were empirically studied through in-depth interviews with users, IS Managers and IC Managers, in a random national sample of forty-seven Fortune 500 companies. The results indicate that, given the multiple expectations surrounding Information Centers, IC professionals need to be flexible in adopting different roles, skilled in coping with different sets of performance criteria, and keenly aware of the highly subjective nature of the evaluations received from their diverse constituents.