participate in system development. Finally, the results of
this survey study were based on both the ability of
respondents to recall (that is, rating their degrees of
participation in a system development project, which had
happened in the past couple of years) as well as on self-
assessments
of
the
respondents’
experiences,
communication
competence,
and
communication
apprehension.
IMPLICATIONS TO SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH AND PRACTICES Implications to System Development Research Previous research found that, in general, user
participation can influence system quality. The main
objective of this study was to find those specific factors
that would improve information quality of a system. It
was found that user participation also positively affects
information quality. However, the information quality
measured here is merely a perception by users. Future
research should look for measurements that take other
stakeholder perspectives into consideration, for example
perspectives of those who are not end-users such as
managers or even top managers, who indirectly use the
information from the systems.
It was found in this study that users’ experiences
with using current systems and current job (used as
surrogates for knowledge) had some effects on the
information quality (i.e., the former had a direct impact,
while the latter had a moderating effect). Because
knowledge is such a broad and often tacit concept, more
studies should be done to delineate different kinds of
user’s knowledge that will help system developers
develop a successful system.
This study only tested the moderating effects of
cognitive communication competence on the relationship
between user participation and information quality. Future
studies should test the effects of communication
competence of users on other success measures such as
project success. It seems logical to think that users who
communicate effectively and appropriately can help save
project time and cost in developing a system. For
example, system developers do not have to spend a lot of
time on clarifying system requirements.
There was no significant result found on the
moderating effect of communication apprehension. Future
studies should incorporate into their models factors that
help alleviate communication apprehension in users, for
example, system developers’ communication skill, users’
relationships with system developers, or organizational
cultures that promote open communications.
