ABSTRACT:

It is generally believed that user involvement is necessary for the successful development of information Systems. Research to date has, however, failed to provide conclusive results in support of such an assertion. The observed inconsistency among the research findings has been attributed to the use of poor methodology and the lack of a strong theoretical basis for investigating the user involvement concept. This paper presents attribution theory as a framework for studying user involvement. Several propositions are derived within the model and implications for future research are discussed.