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

组织继续增加对信息技术（IT）的投资，作为实现更高绩效水平的一种手段，因为他们的管理人员将这些投资视为应对全球竞争影响的一种方式。 IT被视为通过以下方式创造商业价值的一种手段：自动化-用资本取代高成本劳动力，从而提高生产率并降低成本结构;信息化-缩短新产品推出的周期时间;以及转型-通过使用IT功能进行重新设计，总体上改进业务流程。 不断提高的IT成本和缺乏有关收益的经验证据，导致研究人员和高级管理人员对IT的最终收益提出了疑问。最近的一些研究表明，IT投资的回报率为正，而另一些则没有，因此仍然存在重大问题。有大量的组织变量介导IT的回报，这些变量在微观经济分析中被忽略，并且对于更好地进行IT管理非常重要。 行为分析表明，组织绩效取决于一个公司的战略的选择，以及它的执行，它有助于后者主要是通过一套组织的IT联系。 本研究测试这些联系的解释模型，并评估IT对商业价值的贡献。 该研究由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资助。

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.