This thesis explores several basic relations among the technical and social controllable factors which could be useful in the efforts to enhance the evolutionary flexibility of a management information system in the stage of system design.
Based on an extensive survey over existing behavioral and technical research results on MIS which are related to the evolution of information systems, a framework for establishing the design strategy is built to extract a set of propositions. A case study is carried out to validate each of the propositions suggested. Several hypotheses are generated through the extension and additional analysis of the propositions on the basis of the facts found in the case study. These resulting hypotheses reveal some important relations. One example is the positive relations between the evolutionary flexibility of the system and the functional, structural independency among components.
Even though our hypotheses may have a limited validity due to the theoretical weakness of a case study. they can be used for the practical purpose of the control and management of design efforts and for a direction setting to the future research on the evolutionary behavior of information systems.
