Understanding line management participation in IS management for selected business processes in multinational corporations

The IS literature calls for two shifts in IS management: from DP leadership to line management leadership and from a task-oriented approach to a process-oriented approach. Despite the widespread interest in these matters, few empirical studies have dealt with these issues. This paper reports on two exploratory studies which set out to examine use and management of IS in selected business processes in multinational corporations. The studies do not provide strong support for line management leadership in IS. Furthermore, they show that if line management participates in IS management, it takes a task-oriented approach. The results indicate, that major influences on IS-management stem from the type of business process and the employee group. We propose to study the involvement of line management in IS matters with process type as mediating factor.