Enacting formal controls in information system development: process guidance and goal importance

This paper examines the enactment of formal controls in information system development (ISD). Specifically, we investigate process guidance and goal importance as enactments of behavior control and outcome control, respectively. We hypothesize the direct and interaction performance relationships of these control enactments, arguing process guidance exhibits a curvilinear (inverted U-shape) and goal importance exhibits a positive linear relationship with performance. Our finding of a U-shaped interaction relationship indicates that when goal importance is high, higher performance is achieved by either low or high process guidance. Our work bolsters the growing idea that control enactment is a salient consideration in ISD.