Ethics In Business
A Critique of the Stage
Hypothesis
ABSTRACT: The stage hypothesis on the assimilation of
computing technology provides one of the most popular
models for describing and managing the growth of
administrative information systems. Despite little formal
evidence of its reliability or robustness, it has achieved a
high level of acceptance among practitioners. We describe
and summarize the findings of seven empirical studies
conducted during the past six years that tested various
hypotheses derived from this model. The accumulation of
evidence from these studies casts considerable doubt on the
validity of the stage hypothesis as an explanatory structure
for the growth of computing in organizations.
INTRODUCTION
It has been a decade since the postulation of a stage
hypothesis for computer growth and management. From
its inception, the stage hypothesis received a significant
amount of attention from both practitioners and members
of the academic community. Practitioners had long
been struggling for an integrative framework to guide
them in the difficult, and often unrewarding, task of
managing the computer resource. Academics, on the
other hand, were presented with a set of concepts that
could be stated as hypotheses and rigorously tested. By
providing a structure for the complex set of processing
and management practices, the stage hypothesis has become
one of the best-known management concepts in
the information processing industry. Thus, firmly estab-
©1984 ACM 0001-0782/84/0500-0476 75¢
lishing the foundations of the stage hypothesis is of
prime importance to future progress in information systems
(IS) research and practice.
We examine the theoretical and empirical literature
concerning the stage hypothesis to clarify what has
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