Managing information resources at the department level: an agency perspective

The authors contrast the role of department-level information resource management with information resource management at the individual, institutional and market levels. They argue that changes in the economics of computing, which have decreased the economies of scale and specialization previously found in mainframe computing facilities at the institution level, make it feasible to locate information-resource management closer to the tasks where that information is used, and have caused a focus on agency costs of residual efficiency losses, monitoring, and bonding to arise. Desirable reductions agency costs have thus been pursued through a growth of departmental-level information-resource management