A four-dimensional view of IT business value

Abstract

Research on IT business value has recognized that organizational factors play critical roles in affecting how IT impacts on firm performance. However, there is neither a coherent way of specifying organizational factors nor a consensus on the relationship between IT and organizational factors within the research domain. This paper reviews IT business value literature and classifies organizational factors identified in the literature into four categories, based on a four-dimensional view of organizations. A main finding is that pairwise relationships between IT and one single organizational factor have often been the basis for understanding IT business value, while the notion of how IT business value is affected by the interaction between IT and key organizational factors simultaneously is yet to be fully understood and empirically examined. As a result, this paper proposes a holistic approach to understanding IT business value and presents a discussion about future IT business research. © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.