Research opportunities in information technology funding and system justification

Abstract

This article reviews IT funding and system justification practice and research in two dimensions, previews papers in the special issue on 'Information technology funding and system justification in the organization', and identifies opportunities for research in IT funding. IT funding decisions have been hard problems for firms and, because IT investments are so pervasive, they have been very important. Here we review IT funding decisions and research about IT funding historically, using two dimensions, justification dynamism and justification evidence. Over time, the IT funding decisions have changed from static, one time events to iterative and even continuous efforts. Early IT funding decisions were based on finance and accounting models, but changes in the purposes of new systems have necessitated justification based on a variety of qualitative measures. We preview the six papers in the special issue, with an eye to introducing them to readers and also to looking for areas that represent opportunites for future IS research. Finally, we identify eight areas that should represent good opportunities for future research in IT funding and systems justification.

Useful business cases: value creation in IS projects

“…Formative accounts try to establish a basis for future action (for instance by prioritizing IS projects competing for funding). In the latter, value can be understood as broad guides to action ) that calls for justification dynamism, which moves from static to continuous justification of IS funding (Peffers & Dos Santos, 2013). Frisk et al (2015) argue for a form of dynamism enabling the contextual construction of the value constructs as value dials for implicit measurement.…”

“…The topic covers challenges related to IS justification and funding (Peffers & Dos Santos, 2013), operational alignment practices (Vermerris et al, 2014), and executives' perception of what IS business value is (Tallon, 2014). The substantial IS literature on this topic presents an ambiguous and fuzzy IS value construct with a creation process that is a grey box (Schryen, 2013).…”

“…Maes et al (2014) call for research on understanding how different stakeholders can use a business case throughout the entire investment life cycle. The challenges facing chief information officers (CIOs) and IS project managers when wanting to formulate business cases are staggering in terms of: how they should go about explaining IS investment (Frisk et al, 2015), how value propositions change over time (Peffers & Dos Santos, 2013), and how different values associate with different value systems (Rose et al, 2015b). In this paper, we seek to address these challenges from the viewpoint of the stakeholders that are responsible for IS value creation -in our case with a particular focus on stakeholders in public organizations.…”

Approaching information system evaluation methodology and techniques: a comprehensive review

“…In the past, CIATs were commonly used, but new evaluation methods and techniques have now been developed. More advanced financial analysis options have been recommended in the literature (Yu et al, 2005;Patton and Shechet, 2007;Liesiö et al, 2007;Peffers and Dos Santos, 2013), while other authors (Renkema and Berghout, 1997;Irani and Love, 2008;Milis and Mercken, 2004;Bernroider et al, 2013) have presented inclusive lists of investment appraisal approaches used in justifying capital investment in IS. These include a number of common ex-ante evaluation methods (Love et al, 2005), which are listed in Table 3.…”

Evaluation of Information System Investments: A Value Dials approach to closing the theory-practice gap

“…Reviewing research opportunities in IT funding, Peffers and Dos Santos (2013) discuss the complexities involved in ICT evaluation today. They propose the concepts of 'justification dynamism' which moves from static to continuous justification and 'justification evidence' which ranges from qualitative to quantitative.…”