The environmental factors influencing information systems' acquisition, provisioning and utilization at an education and research organization

The object of this research was to analyze external and internal environments of information systems and to find factors that influence the acquisition, provisioning and utilization of information systems, and to identify the effects. The research object was to identify relations between the environmental factors' impacts and information systems in an education and research organization. The empirical research was executed at the University of Oulu. In this research the qualitative method was utilized.

The research data was gathered through interviewing the personnel of the university, altogether 35 persons, standing for four groups: administration, education and research, services and information system support. At first the environmental factors influencing on the information systems were identified and analyzed from related studies. Their impacts on an education and research organization's information systems' acquisition, provisioning and use were then empirically analyzed. The impacts of generic environmental factors, regulation factors, financial factors and internal environmental factors were evaluated. The internal environment's factors had relatively intensive and plentiful influence, because also external factors influenced trough the internal environment. This research gives a rigorous conceptual view to information systems' environmental factors and their impacts in an education and research organizations and provides perspectives to additional studies, too.