The Effect of Top Management Commitment and User Participation on Strategic Information System Planning Success: A Research Framework for Malaysian SMEs

The growing importance of Information System (IS) to support business operation demands for adequate IS planning. Good IS planning enables organizations to closely align the IS and strategic business objectives. Such alignment ultimately ensures organizations to gain competitive advantages from IS-related investment. Despite extensive works to understand strategic IS planning in large organizations, works are still limited to investigate IS planning practices in Small and Medium Enterprise (SMEs). This issue worth further investigation in view of the increasing importance of IS to support many facets of the SMEs operation. More importantly, due to the unique characteristics of the SMEs, top management commitment as well as user participation in IS planning activities are getting more crucial. This study, therefore proposes a framework to assess the effect of top management commitment and user participation on strategic IS planning success. The findings are of relevance for firm's top management in developing more efficient and effective strategic IS planning.