Job characteristics and procedural justice theories offer an avenue through which to better understand the effectiveness of the strategic planning of decision support and other information systems in the subsidiaries of multinational firms. The first theory suggests that greater autonomy leads to greater perceptions of fair treatment, and the second suggests that perceptions of fair treatment lead to greater commitment and performance. A postal survey of 130 chief information officers of the US subsidiaries of multinational firms collected data to test hypotheses based on the theory.Data analysis using partial least squares tested a high‐level model and a decomposed model. The high‐level model revealed that a second order strategic systems planning (SSP) autonomy construct predicted the perceptions of procedural justice, procedural justice predicted a second order SSP construct, and the SSP construct predicted SSP effectiveness. The decomposed model showed that autonomy in the especially creative strategy conception phase of planning predicted procedural justice. Procedural justice predicted all of the phases of SSP, while the strategy selection phase alone led to planning effectiveness.These findings underscore the impact of the autonomy to be creative and of the sense of fair treatment, both within the context of limited autonomy for the choice of the strategy. They highlight the impact of the choice of the strategy in contrast to other planning phases, and perhaps most importantly, they argue for local control of the planning process.