The Business Value of Information Technology: Models, Empirical Analysis, and Application

各组织继续增加对信息技术(IT)的投资，以此作为实现更高水平业绩的一种手段，因为它们的管理人员将这些投资视为对抗全球竞争影响的一种方式。它被视为一种通过以下方式创造业务价值的手段：自动化--用资本取代高成本的劳动力，从而提高生产率和降低成本结构；信息化--缩短新产品推出的周期时间；以及转型--通过使用IT功能重新设计，总体上改进业务流程。不断上涨的IT成本和缺乏关于收益的经验证据，导致研究人员和高级管理人员对IT的最终收益提出了质疑。最近的一些研究表明，IT投资带来了正回报，而其他研究则没有，因此仍然存在重大问题。有大量的组织变量调节着IT的收益，这些变量在微观经济分析中被省略了，了解这些变量对于更好的IT管理非常重要。行为分析表明，组织绩效取决于企业战略的选择和执行，IT主要通过一系列组织-IT联系对后者做出贡献。这项研究测试了这些联系的解释性模型，并评估了IT对业务价值的贡献。这项研究是根据NSF/私营部门联合倡议与合作组织计算机科学公司研究和咨询服务提供资金的。

Organizations continue to increase their investments in information technology (IT) as a means of achieving higher levels of performance because their executives see these investments as a way to counter the impact of global competition. IT is seen as a means to create business value through: automation - substituting capital for high cost labor thereby improving productivity and reducing cost structures; informatization - reducing cycle times for new product introduction; and transformation - improving business processes in general through redesign using IT capabilities. The continually higher IT costs and the lack of empirical evidence about payoffs have resulted in questions by researchers and senior executives about the final payoffs from IT. Some recent studies have demonstrated a positive return on IT investments, while others have not, and so significant questions remain. There are a large number of organizational variables that mediate the payoff from IT, which are omitted in microeconomic analyses, and that are important to understand for better IT management. Behavioral analyses indicate that organizational performance depends on the choice of a firm's strategy as well as its execution, and that IT contributes primarily to the latter though a set of organization-IT linkages. This research tests an explanatory model of these linkages and assesses the contribution of IT to business value. The research is funded under the Joint NSF/Private Sector Initiative with the cooperating organization, Computer Sciences Corporation Research and Advisory Services.