Senior Management, the Locus of Decision Making and the Management Services Department

Abstract

An earlier study (Lucas, 1984), while finding support for theHickson (1971) framework for organizational power, found that departmentmanagers in three major industrial firms rated their information servicesdepartment as the least critical of five departments, for success in theirindustry. This study polled 37 plant managers from the same firms. Plantmanagers, like their department manager counterparts, considered theinformation services department least critical for success. Centralizationof decision making was found to be positively related to informationservices department power. Finally, implications of the study on distributedversus centralized information processing are discussed.