Data quality and work alignment: do IT professionals think differently?

Abstract

Organisational decision-makers have experienced the adverse effects of decisions based on information of inferior quality. Millions of dollars have been spent on information systems to improve data quality (DQ) as well as the skills and capacity of IT professionals. It is an important issue that the IT professionals align their work within the expectation of the organisation's vision. This chapter provides some theoretical background to DQ and establishes a link between DQ, performance-importance analysis and work alignment. Four case studies are presented to support the theory developed in this chapter and to answer the question as to whether the IT professionals consider DQ issues differently from other information users.