Information center management control measures: a survey and comparison

The authors report on a survey of information center (IC) management control measures. Data were obtained by interviewing individuals in 20 different organizations using a semistructured questionnaire consisting of over 100 questions. Wherever possible, results of the survey are compared with descriptions and prescriptions found in the literature. Twenty-five generalizations are formulated regarding management control measures currently employed in the context of the IC. Among these are: the most common measures of IC successes are level of usage and user satisfaction; organizations do not usually have formal procedures for evaluating applications developed by either users or IC staff; on average, 61% of IC budget is allocated to personnel, 29% to hardware, and 10% to software; ICs do not usually charge for their services; and return-on-investment is not usually calculated for the IC