A typology of management information systems users and its implications for user information satisfaction research
Proceedings of the twenty-first annual conference on Computer personnel research, 1985, Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, p152, 13p
Davis, Joseph C.
User Information Satisfaction (UIS) has emerged as the major surrogate for the effectiveness of Management Information Systems (MIS) in organizations. While the concepts of "information" and "satisfaction" have been researched extensively, we argue that our understanding of the MIS user is inadequate. This inadequacy is compounded by the rapidly changing information technology which has tended to blur the traditional distinctions between users and non-users and is rendering obsolete the implicit assumption of the functionally homogeneous user underlying a wide spectrum of studies. Based on a detailed survey of the literature, we propose a typology of users consisting of three categories: direct user, autonomous user, and indirect user. Direct user is someone who interfaces directly with the computer-based information systems, working with one or more systems, largely designed, implemented, and maintained by the MIS/Data Processing (DP) department or receives periodic computer reports. Autonomous user develops and uses simple systems and/or application programs he or she needs, either individually or in small groups of users. This class of users possesses some amount of computing skills and makes use of a variety of tools such as general purpose, commercial software, user-friendly operating systems, personal computers (PCs), workstations and higher level programming languages. The third category of users—indirect users—are typically managers in the higher levels of the organizational hierarchy whose interface with the computer is mediated by staff analysts or assistants. A certain degree of overlap across the categories is to be expected. The implications of the typology for UIS research in particular and MIS research and practice in general are discussed.

ISE Categories:  Satisfaction Models