An empirical study of the effects of organizational structure on the implementation of data warehouse topologies

In the data warehouse literature, it is widely held that a data warehousing (DWG) technology is a cornerstone of the organization's ability to provide effective information processing. If implemented correctly, DWG technology can enable and share the discovery and exploration of important business trends and dependencies that otherwise would have gone unnoticed. In this context, information systems strategic planners debate whether to start DW projects with enterprise-wide data warehouses (DWs) or with smaller-scale data marts (DMs). Enterprise-wide DW are built in the interests of overall business decision support and contain historical data summarized and consolidated from detailed individual records from a number of operational databases. At the same time, organizations are increasingly turning to smaller-scale DMs as alternative means of delivering information due to their quicker delivery, lower risk, and lower costs. DMs seem to provide specific solutions to specific business challenges.; In principle, DW can meet information needs and provide strategic business opportunities. These drivers for DWG technology can be found in successfully changing organizational structures. Thus, this dissertation seeks to explain whether or not the outcome differences in DW topology could be explained by differences in an organization's choice of structures. This leads to two primary objectives: (a) to determine whether a potential relationship exists between organizational structure and the choice of data warehouse topology, and (b) to utilize the research findings to develop appropriate organizational variables that can differentiate data warehouse topologies.; This dissertation focuses on a multiple case study with a research survey to provide a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between organizational structure and DW topology. The research question generally investigated in this context is: Are three particular aspects of organizational structure likely to differ with respect to the degree of centralization in their DWG implementation approach? These three aspects of organizational structure are formalization, decentralization, and level of IT decision-making authority. The results of data analyses indicate that formalization and level of IT decision-making authority were found to significantly affect the differences in outcome of DW topology. In addition, a higher degree of formalization and a highly centralized IT decision authority reflect a dominating enterprise-wide DWG implementation approach.