Not much attention has been paid to the characteristics of successful MIS in small business in Korea. This study compares the characteristics of successful MIS with those of less successful MIS of manufacturing industry in Korea in terms of micro level, macro level, and personal level. The micro level consists of those variables relating to the system development and maintenance while the macro level consists of the environmental variables relating to the information systems. The personal level measures a personal EDP experience. A mail survey was sent to small manufacturing companies to collect the data for the hypothesis tests. And 81 usable questionnaires were returned for data analysis. This study performs the validity of the categorization of variables in terms of three levels. The results shows that this categorization is appropriate but the personal level. As the personal experiences of EDP in Korea used to come up with those of the organization, the variables in the personal level have high correlations with those in the macro level in empirical testing. As the personal level, however, is different dimension from the macro level in theoretical aspect, the level is maintained separately throughout the study. The data were analyzed with MANOVA and two group discriminant analysis. The analyses reveal that the characteristics of successful MIS are different from those of less successful MIS in terms of three levels. And the micro level is more important than the macro level to develop successful MIS. That is because the organizations have relatively few experience in dealing with information systems, they have not developed unique information systems which are adjusted to their organizational characteristics. Those findings seems to be important determinants of success for the MIS in a firm.