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– The last 40-50 years have seen the conceptualization, growth, development and pervasiveness of information systems into our everyday lives. The research and theories explaining IS (information systems) have grown in parallel to keep pace with the rapid growth of technology and electronic communication systems. In fact, the overall theoretical body of research which has attempted to define and explain the various managerial perspectives, issues and methodological paradigms surrounding IS can be classified into five different research streams (Banker R. D. and Kauffman R.J. 2004)
In their paper, Markus and Robey (1983) attempt to define organizational validity at four different levels i.e. user-system fit, organizational structure-system fit, power distribution - system fit and finally environment-system fit. Markus and Robey’s (1983) observations on organizational ‘fit’ of IS still hold true today. This has been supported by field evidence from several studies. Consider for example, the case of IS being implemented in two local government agencies in the United States of America. In this particular example, guided by a framework linking social context with organizational processes, the researchers used inductive methods to describe the social constructed frames of meaning pertaining to IS (Sundeep Sahay and Daniel Robey 1996). Their findings revealed that strikingly different patterns of implementation and social consequences resulted from the same technology used in both cases. This illustrates the importance of social interpretations in the implementation of IS / IT since they often mediate between organizational context and the process of implementation to produce particular consequences of technology (Sundeep Sahay and Daniel Robey 1996).