Do Business Intelligence Systems enforce organizational coordination mechanisms?

Coordination is intended as managing dependencies between activities such as, in particular, decision-making support, decisional decentralization and reduced centralization of information power, internal communication and collaboration and sharing and divulgation of knowledge. By improving all these activities, enterprises are able to create efficient and effective coordination mechanisms and consequently reduce costs and organizational complexity. The research question of this study aims at verifying if Business Intelligence Systems (BISs) are actually able to strengthen the existing coordination mechanisms, i.e., make them more efficient and less costly. The research method is an empirical research of 30 cases of enterprises with a large number of users of a BIS. Early findings reveal that BISs are mainly considered as technological tools, with little relevance being attributed to their potential in terms of facilitators of coordination mechanisms between actors.