Evolution of the Help Desk Service in a Mexican Organization: A Case Study-Edición Única

The Help Desk service has been a useful way to fulfill the immediate needs of MIS users when they interrupt their work due to a misfunction of technology or simply when they have some question about the hardware or software. vi The Help Desk formal service is hardly comming to existence in a planned way, it has rather evolved because of the users's needs demanding a fast solution in order to mantain the operation up. That's why the gathering of information about the problems solved is not properly used. In the ideal situation, this information should be delivered and used by the decision-makers for generating knowledge, and therefore having an impact on the organization's technological strategy. Due to the hurry for solving problems and the little emphasis for generating knowledge, the research in this area has been almost completely in the hands of practitioners. Consequently, it is important to deal with two issues: the formal research for Help Desk and the study of its evolution since its formalization. This thesis shows the concepts related to the Help Desk service and also its descriptors and the way in which its structure and function are influenced by several organizational factors. The objective is to propose a theoretical model for the evolution of this service inside an organization. A case study is carried out in a mexican organization in order to evaluate the validity of such model. This evolution is defined from the possible ways in which an organization uses the information technology, according to the IT strategic grid proposed by Cash (Cash 1992). The results of the research confirm the usefulness of the proposed model.