AN INFORMATION ORIENTED FRAMEWORK FOR RELATING
IS/IT RESOURCES AND BUSINESS VALUE
Alexander Borek and Ajith Kumar Parlikad
Institute for Manufacturing, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge
17 Charles Babbage Road, Cambridge, CB3 0FS, U.K.
Markus Helfert
School of Computing, Dublin City University, Glasnevin, Dublin 9, Ireland
Mouzhi Ge
Fakultät für Informatik, Technische Universität Dortmund, Baroper Str. 301, 44227 Dortmund, Germany
Keywords: IS/IT business value, IS/IT resources, IS/IT impact, Information quality, Information risk.
Abstract: Several studies have highlighted the importance of information and information quality in organisations and
thus information is regarded as key determinant for the success and organisational performance. At the same
time, there are numerous studies, frameworks and case studies examining the impact of information
technology and systems to business value. Recently, several studies have proposed maturity models for
information management capabilities in the literature, which claim that a higher maturity results in a higher
organizational performance. Although these studies provide valuable information about the underlying
relations, most are limited in specifying the relationship in more detail. Furthermore, most prominent
approaches do not or at least not explicitly consider information as important influencing factor for
organisational performance. In this paper, we aim to review selected contributions and introduce a model
that shows how IS/IT resources and capabilties could be interlinked with IS/IT utilization, organizational
performance and business value. Complementing other models and frameworks, we explicitly consider
information from a management maturity, quality and risk perspective. Moreover, the paper discusses how
each part of the model can be assessed in order to validate the model in future studies.
1 INTRODUCTION
Organisations invest substantial capital into the
development and maintenance of information
technologies (IT) and information systems (IS), in
the following denoted as IS/IT as both terms are
overlapping and difficult to differentiate in practice.
IS/IT play an increasingly important role for the
support of management activities on all
organisational layers, and spending for IS/IT
therefore increases year after year (Eastwood 2008).
IS/IT add value due to their specific capabilities,
which are (1) the capability to select and acquire
information resources, (2) the capability to describe
and organise information resources, (3) the
capability to store and process information, (4) the
capability to integrate information, (5) the capability
to search and retrieve information and (6) the
capability to manage information (Fattahi & Afshar
2006).
However, the question how and to what extend
IS/IT enhances organisational performance has been
a major focus of interests and dispute over decades
of IS/IT research (Melville et al. 2004). Some
research pointed out that there might be even no
positive relationship between IS/IT and business
success, a phenomenon labelled as the IT
productivity paradox (E. Brynjolfsson 1993).
Brynjolfsson and Yang argue that a positive
connection exists, although it can be diminished by
miss-measurement, lags, redistribution, or miss-
management (Erik Brynjolfsson & Shinkyu Yang
358
Borek A., Kumar Parlikad A., Helfert M. and Ge M..
AN INFORMATION ORIENTED FRAMEWORK FOR RELATING IS/IT RESOURCES AND BUSINESS VALUE.
DOI: 10.5220/0003510003580367
In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS-2011), pages 358-367
ISBN: 978-989-8425-56-0
Copyright
c
 2011 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

1996). Factors that influence the relationship have
been identified, which include the type of IS/IT,
management practices, organisational structure, and
the competitive and macro environment (E.
Brynjolfsson et al. 2002, Cooper et al. 2000, Dewan
& K. L. Kraemer 2000). Moreover, value can be
captured outside the organisation by trading partners
or end customers (Bresnahan 1986, Hitt & E.
Brynjolfsson 1996). Furthermore several studies
have shown a significant impact of information and
its quality on the performance of an organization
(Redman 1998, English 1999, Slone 2006).
So far, frameworks that attempt to explain the
IS/IT business value relationship range from
focusing either on IS/IT resources and capabilities,
utilization/usage and behavioural aspects of IS/IT,
impact on business process and decisions, or IS/IT
performance measurements (Nevo & Wade 2010;
Delone & McLean 2003; Melville et al. 2004; Irani
2002). Delone & McLean’s models indicate the
importance of information and information quality
to understand the IS/IT business impact, but do not
specify its role further (Delone & McLean 2003;
DeLone & McLean 1992).
In this paper, we show how these frameworks
could be combined to a coherent model that relates
the discussed aspects. Moreover, we argue that a
framework that aims to explain the business value of
IS/IT has to be centred around information as a
resource, since IT is the primary technology that is
used to manage information (Eaton et al. 1988).
In order to explicitly represent informational
aspects, we propose therefore to extend current
frameworks by adding an information perspective
that puts a stronger emphasis on information quality
and information-quality related risks. Objective of
this work is to link previous work on the business
impact of IS/IT with the extensive body of
knowledge of the information quality discipline (e.g.
Wang & Strong 1996, Ge & Helfert 2008), which, as
far as we know, has been mostly ignored in the
previous attempts by the IS community to explain
the IS/IT business value. This new extended
framework can serve as a bridge between existing
frameworks by adding information management,
information quality and information risks (caused by
poor information quality) as the elements that link
IS/IT resources with organizational performance.
The results can hence be helpful to explain the actual
business value of IS/IT from an information
perspective and provide a reference point for further
research.
The paper is structured as followed: First, we
give an extensive review of related work that
provides the components to build and explain the
IS/IT business value chain, but also uncovers its
limitations. Then, we propose and describe a new
framework, which is subsequently discussed
regarding its validity, but also examined to outline
research directions for the future.
2 RELATED WORK
Gustafsson et al. have presented a comprehensive
model that aims to explain the business impact of
IS/IT, which has three generic elements: IT,
organizational impact, and business value
(Gustafsson et al. 2009), as shown in Figure 1. Other
related frameworks have been presented in the
literature aiming to refine this generic model.
Figure 1: A generic model of IS/IT business value
(Gustafsson et al. 2009).
We use this framework as orientation to relate other
frameworks. First, we give an overview of work in
the area of maturity models for information
management (section 2.1). Then we present related
frameworks by classifying them into four categories
depending on their primary focus: frameworks that
focus on resources and IS/IT capabilities (section
2.2), frameworks that concentrate on IS/IT
utilisation and behavioural aspects (sections 2.3),
frameworks that centre on processes and decisions
(section 2.4), frameworks that have a focus on IS/IT
performance and impact measurement (section 2.5.).
2.1 Information Management Maturity
As it will be discussed in the next sections, many
frameworks about business value of IS/IT aim at
explaining a particular part of the value chain. They
do not attempt to show how to improve the input
factors in order to increase IS/IT business value in
an organization. A collection of work that shares this
goal is work that has been conducted in the area of
information management maturity models. This
work stream is mostly based on the capability
maturity models proposed in the software
engineering discipline (Humphrey 1988), which
have their roots in Crosby’s maturity model
introduced in the quality management area (Crosby
1979). A maturity model is used to assess
capabilities by evaluating the maturity of processes
IT
Organizational
impact
BusinessValue
AN INFORMATION ORIENTED FRAMEWORK FOR RELATING IS/IT RESOURCES AND BUSINESS VALUE
359

and to identify priority areas for improvement. A
typical model consists of five maturity levels: initial
(level 1), repeatable (level 2), defined (level 3),
managed (level 4), and optimizing (level 5),
although levels are sometimes named differently.
Information quality management maturity
frameworks specifically focus on evaluating
capabilities for information quality management.
The Information Quality Maturity Grid (IQMMG)
has been a first attempt (English 1999), which is
build on (Crosby 1979). However, this model does
not provide an assessment methodology and has not
been extensively validated. Ryu et al. show in an
empirical study with 119 participants that a company
that moves up in the information quality
management maturity ladder is likely to improve
information quality (Ryu et al. 2006). More recent,
information management maturity models
specifically show how information management
maturity can be improved based on the maturity
assessment. Cabellero et al., for instance, describe an
information system as a collection of information
management processes and each process as a
combination of two sub-processes, the first one aims
at manufacturing an information product, and the
second one aims at ensuring a high quality of the
first sub-process (Caballero et al. 2008). Information
quality in the whole information system can
therefore be improved by focusing on critical
information management processes. Similarly, IQM-
CMM, a maturity model that is based on an
extensive Delphi study, defines 13 key performance
areas and 48 critical success factors and an
assessment methodology to identify critical areas for
improvement (Baškarada 2009). Moreover,
Baškarada’s work provides further empirical
evidence, which supports the hypothesis that a
movement to a higher information quality
management maturity level increases the level of
information quality. However, this work does not
make any attempt to link higher levels of
information quality to higher levels of organisational
performance.
2.2 Resources and IS/IT Capabilities
Nevo and Wade (2010) suggest a path that links
IS/IT assets to sustainable competitive advantage.
Their model describes how IS/IT assets and
organizational resources such as departments or
teams are combined in order to create IS/IT-enabled
resources, which can provide sustainable
competitive advantage for a company. The model is
based on systems theory and conducts a resource-
based view on the strategic potential of an
organizational resource. This potential reflects the
ability of implementing strategies to improve firms’
efficiency and effectiveness. It directly indicates a
firm’s sustainable competitive advantage. The work
provides a path to explore the business value from
IS/IT assets. In the presence of compatibility and
integration effort, sustainable competitive advantage
can be attained by IS/IT-enabled resources, which is
a result of interactions between IS/IT assets and
organizational resources. Moreover Melville et al.
(2004) conduct an extensive review on the literature
that studies the relationship between IS/IT resources
and organizational performance. Based on the
review, they propose an integrative model of IS/IT
business value that connects IS/IT resources (in form
of technology and humans) and complementary
organisational resources to organisational
performance. They conclude that IS/IT resource is
confirmed to be valuable and that it can provide
various potential benefits such as quality
improvement and cost reduction.
Relating IS/IT resources to IS/IT capability,
Ravichandran and Lertwongsatien (2005) consider
IS/IT capability as the ability to deploy IS/IT
resources. They further point out that IS/IT
resources are the raw materials in the development
of IS/IT capabilities. Their findings confirm that
IS/IT resources are positively associated with IS/IT
capabilities, which in turn affect Firm’s
Performance. Bharadwaj (2000) conduct an
empirical research to study the relationship between
IS/IT capability and firm performance. The paper
defines IS/IT capability as the “ability to mobilize
and deploy IS/IT-based resources in combination or
copresent with other resources and capabilities”
(p.171). IS/IT-based resources can be classified into
IS/IT infrastructure, human IS/IT skills, and IS/IT-
enabled intangibles. Bharadwaj discusses the three
resource-based views of IS/IT and develops the
notion of IS/IT as an organizational capability. With
an empirical test, this work concludes that increasing
IS/IT capability can result in increasing
organizational performance. It also indicates the
importance of creating a firm-wide IS/IT capability
rather than merely investing in IS/IT.
2.3 IS/IT Utilization
Apart from the resource-based view above, some
researchers investigate the organizational impact
from the view of IS/IT utilization by recognising the
behavioural aspects and individual task
performance. For instance, Goodhue and Thompson
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(1995) propose a model that focuses on association
between information systems and individual
performance, i.e. the task technology fitness (TTF).
Their work emphasizes the fit between IS/IT and
users’ tasks and provides an evaluation approach to
test whether IS/IT meets the user needs. They
conclude their work by showing how IS/IT add
value to individual performance and arguing the
effects of task-technology fit and utilization on IS/IT
success, diagnostics for IS/IT problems, and related
user involvement. In addition, they also point out
that data quality is one of the key constructs to
identify the research gaps between systems
capabilities and user needs. Furthermore, Goodhue
(1995) propose the user evaluation of TTF as a
measure of IS/IT success. He defines TTF as “the
extent that technology functionality matches task
requirements and individual abilities” (p.1829).
From this definition, three factors can be found
relating to TTF, which are task, technology and
individual. Thus users evaluate TTF based on the
extent to which systems meet their needs and
abilities. By using a survey, Goodhue provides both
theoretical and empirical basis of user evaluations of
TTF as a measure of IS/IT success. Connecting TTF
to utilisation, Goodhue considers utilization as a
performance indicator besides TTF. Furthermore,
utilization can be affected by TTF. This means if a
technology is useful, a higher TTF of the technology
will result in a better performance.
Based on a systematic review, Delone and
McLean (1992) propose a comprehensive IS/IT
success model that stresses the effects of use and
user satisfaction on individual and organizational
impact. System quality and information quality are
considered as the influencing factors to use and user
satisfaction. Importantly, this model brought the
attention of information quality to the IS/IT research
community and can be considered as one of the
pioneering contributions in information quality
research. Ten years later, Delone and McLean
(2003) proposed a revised model that directly
focusses on the net benefit instead of organisational
impact. As the net benefit can be considered as one
form of business value, Delone and McLean’ model
is not only in line with the model from Gustafsson et
al. (2009), but also emphasizes the importance of
information quality and service quality to business
value.
2.4 Process and Decision Impact
A substantial contribution to understand IS/IT
business value has been studies showing how IS/IT
impacts on business processes and/or decision
making. A business process can be defined “a
specific ordering of work activities across time and
place, with a beginning, an end, and clearly
identified inputs and outputs: a structure for action”
(Davenport 1993, p.5). Porter and Millar argue that
activities that create value consist of a physical and
an information-processing component and each
value activity uses information (Porter & Millar
1985). Information technology has therefore a
strategic significance in every company as it can
transform the value chain of a product or service. In
their integrative model of IS/IT business value,
Mooney et al. propose a process framework for
assessing the IS/IT business value (Mooney,
Gurbaxani, et al. 1996). They present a typology of
processes that subdivides business processes into
operational and management processes and argue
that IS/IT creates business value as it has
automational, informational, and transformational
effects on the processes. Similarly, Melville et al.
see business processes and business process
performance as the key steps that link IS/IT
resources and complementary organizational
resources to organizational performance (Melville,
K. Kraemer, et al. 2004). Moreover, they suspect
that in a net-enabled organization (Straub & R. T.
Watson 2001), IS/IT may additionally enable
process synthesis and integration of processes across
conventional organizational and physical boundaries
(Basu & Blanning 2003).
Other researchers gathered evidence that
information quality has a considerable effect on
decision quality. Keller and Staelin investigate the
effects of quality and quantity of information on
decision effectiveness of consumers (Keller &
Staelin 1987). They conducted an experiment with
four different levels of information quantity and four
different levels of information quality. Their results
indicate that increasing information quantity impairs
decision effectiveness and, in contrast, increasing
information quality improves decision effectiveness.
Jung et al. make a study to explore the impact of
representational information quality, (which
comprises the IQ dimensions interpretability, easy to
understand, and concise and consistent
representation) on decision effectiveness in a
laboratory experiment with two tasks, which have
different levels of complexity (Jung, Olfman, et al.
2005). The results strongly support the hypothesis
that a higher representational data quality improves
the decision-making performance regarding
problem-solving accuracy and time. Furthermore,
Ge and Helfert’s work shows that the improvement
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of information quality in the intrinsic category (e.g.
accuracy) and in the contextual category (e.g.
completeness) (Ge & Helfert 2008) of Wang and
Strong’s information quality framework enhance
decision quality (Wang & Strong 1996). Overall,
there is sufficient evidence to conclude that IS/IT
has a significant impact on decision making and
there are many indicators that it also impacts
business processes through automational,
informational, and transformational effects.
2.5 IS/IT Performance & Impact
Measurement
In addition to measuring IS/IT performance and its
impact to organizations, organizational performance
has always been of consideration to IS/IT
researchers and practitioners, resulting in a plethora
of performance related contributions. Earlier
approaches focused, for example, on the economic
value of information systems (e.g. van Wegen & de
Hoog 1996). They were more recently detailed, as
outlined above, to frameworks for assigning the
impact of IS/IT to businesses (Mooney et al. 1996)
(Melville et al. 2004). Irani (2002) provides a review
of literature in the area of IS/IT evaluation. In
addition to these IS/IT oriented frameworks,
research related to performance measurement (PM)
have resulted in an abundance of recommendations,
frameworks and approaches for PM systems (Folan,
Browne 2005). PM recommendations provide some
indications for performance measures, whereas
frameworks provide more information about the
process or PM system. PM systems aim to provide a
detailed PM process together with PM indicators.
However, in comparison to the variety of PM
frameworks, there are only very few comprehensive
PM systems in existence. As these contributions are
mostly based on organizational best practice and
experiences, the comparison of various
performances measures between different
organisations is difficult or not possible, and thus
prevents thorough examination between IS/IT and
organisational performance.
Folan and Browne (2005) outline major PM
recommendations, frameworks and systems. In
relation to our work we selected four approaches as
most indicative. Fitzgerald et al. (1991) examine the
result and determinants related to performance, and
distinguish explicitly in their framework
competitiveness and performance as results in
contrast to the determinants such as quality,
flexibility, resource utilization and innovation. The
relationship between quality and performance was
more recently examined by Angel and Chandra
(2001) and is seen as essential in order to understand
the different elements influencing organizational
performance. The balanced scorecard represents a
prominent PM system as an approach to describe
various views on organizational performance
together with a management and measurement
approach (Kaplan & Norton 1992). As described
above, Mooney et al. 1996 describe a process
oriented framework for assessing the business value
of IS/IT, and include the value perspective. Neely et
al. (2000) describe a structured methodology for the
design of performance measurement system.
Explicit performance indicators are provided for
example in Medori and Steeple’s (2000), Krauth et
al. (2005) and practitioners oriented reference
models such as SCOR (Huan et al. 2004).
2.6 Summary
Based on the literature review, the IS/IT business
value can be explained using the four relationships:
1) IS/IT resources and complementary
organizational resources influence IS/IT capabilities.
2) IS/IT capabilities further have an impact on IS/IT
utilization.
3) IS/IT utilization affects business processes and
decision-making.
4) These effects are visible in the short-term in the
form of financials and other performance measures;
in the long-term it has an impact on competitive
advantage.
As shown in Table 1, existing work focuses only at
one or two aspect of the IS/IT business value
chain.We therefore propose a new IS/IT business
value framework that integrates the current work on
resources and IS/IT capabilities, IS/IT utilization,
process and decision impact, and performance and
impact measurement.
Moreover, the role of information as a resource
is not explicitly mentioned in most of the
frameworks. The reviewed literature has thus so far
ignored or undervalued the role of information in the
IS/IT business value chain. The functionality of
IS/IT is limited to select, acquire, describe, organise,
store, process, integrate, search, retrieve and manage
information resources (Fattahi & Afshar 2006). The
input and output of IS/IT is therefore always
information and can be compared to the physical in-
and output in a traditional manufacturing system
(Ballou et al. 1998).
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362

Table 1: IS/IT business value literature overview.
Literature (a) (b) (c) (d)
Information Management Maturity
English (1999)*    
Ryu et al. (2006)*    
Caballero et al. (2008)*    
Baškarada (2009)*    
Resources and IS/IT Capabilities
Nevo and Wade (2010)    
Melville et al. (2004)    
Ravichandran &
Lertwongsatien (2005)
   
Bharadwaj (2000)    
IS/IT Utilization
Delone & McLean (1992)*    
Delone & McLean (2003)*    
Goodhue and Thompson
(1995)
   
Goodhue (1995)    
Process and Decision Impact Frameworks
Porter & Millar (1985)    
Mooney et al. (1996)    
Melville et al. (2004)    
Keller & Staelin (1987)*    
Jung et al. (2005)*    
Ge & M. Helfert (2008)*    
IS/IT Performance & Impact Measurement
Fitzgerald et al. (1991)    
Kaplan & Norton (1992)    
Neely et al. (2000)    
Medori and Steeple’s (2000)    
Legend:
* Information quality is explicitly mentioned.
(a) Resources and IS/IT capabilities
(b) IS/IT usage and behavioural aspects
(c) Processes and decisions
(d) IS/IT performance and impact measurement
 fully covered  partially covered  not covered
As a consequence, a framework that tries to
explain the relationship between IS/IT and business
value should be centred on information as a resource
and describe how IS/IT is interlinked to information
management, quality, and risks. In the next section,
we present a framework that aims at filling this gap
by explicitly considering the information-related
concepts in each step of the IS/IT business value
chain.
3 AN INFORMATION ORIENTED
FRAMEWORK
Figure 2 shows a framework that integrates the
components from (a) to (d) in Table 1 and its
underlying relationships. Moreover, related concepts
are connected to each component in the figure.
The inventor of the resource-based view of the
firm has defined resources as “those (tangible and
intangible) assets which are tied semi-permanently
to the firm” (Wernerfelt 1984, p.172). IS/IT
resources comprise therefore everything from hard-
and software, IS/IT personnel and managers, to
technological knowledge that is available in the
given organisation. Complementary organisational
resources are all other resources in the company that
interplay with the IS/IT resources. In addition,
information resources, which have been not
mentioned in previous frameworks, are an important
type of resource that should be considered in
particular. Information resources are generated and
modified in the process of utilization of IS/IT and
therefore create an enforcing feedback loop,
enabling the continuous enhancement of IS/IT
capabilities.
Capabilities can be viewed as superior business
processes (Stalk et al. 1992). All resources taken
together need to be coordinated in order to form
IS/IT capabilities. The coordination of the resources
itself requires special capabilities, i.e. coordination
capabilities, which again take use of a part of the
defined resources, e.g. management personnel,
information resources (Mills et al. 2003). Moreover,
Mills et al. suggest that capabilities can be
coordinated in order to get higher level capabilities.
Coordinating all IS/IT capabilities can therefore be
seen as a higher level capability, i.e. the information
manufacturing (Ballou et al. 1998) or information
management capability.
The maturity of the IS/IT capabilities can be
defined using existing information management
maturity model like, for instance, IQM-CMM
(Baškarada 2009). Altogether, the IS/IT capabilities
have a major influence on the “fitness for use”
(Wang & Strong 1996, p. 6) of information, i.e.
information quality, which can be observed when
IS/IT is utilized to use information in a business
process or for decision making. For instance, if a
server that contains customer data has constantly
downtimes, it will affect the ‘accessibility’ of the
customer data, which is one of the frequently used
information quality dimensions (e.g. Wang & Strong
1996, Batini & Scannapieco 2006). If the customer
data is used, for example, by an online shop to send
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363

Figure 2: An integrated framework for IS/IT business value from an information perspective.
out products to the customers, the unavailability of
the customer data can have a major impact on some
of the business processes that are related to logistics.
These information-quality related risks, which are
referred as ‘information risks’ in the following,
eventually have an influence on the financial
performance and on the competitiveness of an
organisation, or other targets depending on the
mission and goals of the particular organisation
(Redman 1998). Measures can be both financial and
non financial and are strongly context-dependent.
The entire IS/IT business value chain takes place in
(1) a macro environment, which is strongly
dependent on a number of external factors like
industry, market situation, competition, etc., and in
(2) a micro environment, which summarizes the soft
factors within an organisation that are difficult to
change in the short-term, e.g. the company culture
and employee satisfaction.
The assessment of each component in the
proposed framework is important to ensure its
usability and for validation purposes. Each
component in the information-oriented framework
can be measured by using existing methods.
Information management resources and capabilities
can be assessed using one of the information
management maturity models that have been
presented in the literature (e.g. Caballero et al 2008,
Baškarada 2009). The immediate success of IS/IT
utilisation can be measured with the help of
assessment methodologies for information quality,
which can be classified into objective and subjective
assessment (Batini & Scannapieco 2006).
Information risks in form of the impact of
information quality on business processes, decisions,
and eventually on the related financials, competitive
advantage, and other measures, can be assessed
using a number of different methods to measure
business impact of information quality that range
from simple techniques to sophisticated
methodologies (e.g. McGilvray 2008, English 1999,
Loshin 2001). The most recent contribution is a
process for ‘Total Information Risk Management’
that combines all three types of assessments, i.e. of
information management maturity, information
quality and information risk, in order to guide
effectively through the improvement of IS/IT in an
IS/IT Resources
• Technology
• Human
Complementary
Organisational
Resources
(e.g. Partnership)
Business Processes
(operational / managerial)
Organisational Performance
• Decision Quality
• Operational Performance
• Tactical Performance
• Strategic Potential
Macro Environment (e.g. competition, market)
IS/IT Capabilities
Business Value
Organisational Impact
IS/IT utilisation
IS/IT
Resources
Environment
Micro Environment (e.g. culture)
Shareholder
Value
Other Value
Measures
Decisions
What to explain
Underlying Relationship
Use , User satisfaction
Task‐Technology Fit
Information Quality
IS/IT ‐ Service Quality
IS/IT ‐ System Quality
Innovation
Flexibility
Related Concepts
Information
resources
Financials
Competitve
Advantage
Other
Benefit
s
Information
Risk
Information
Quality
Information Manufacturing /
Information Management
Information Management Maturity Assessment
Measure / Indicators
Information Quality Assessment
Information Perspective
Information Risk Assessment
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364

organisation (Borek et al. 2011). This process might
therefore provide a good basis for an empirical
validation of the framework for the future.
In summary, information is manufactured and
managed with the help of IS/IT capabilities that use
a variety of IS/IT resources, complementary
organisational resources, and already existing
information resources. The quality of the resulting
information products/resources is defined in the
context of its use, i.e. depending on the IS/IT
utilization. If information quality is poor, the IS/IT
utilization cannot meet its purpose and might have a
negative influence on business processes, decision
making and eventually on organisational
performance. These effects might be even
observable in highly aggregated measures like, for
instance, changes of the share prices of a company
in the stock market.
4 DISCUSSION
In the above section we proposed a framework for
IS/IT business value. The framework is developed
based on reviewing relevant literature. In the
following, we discuss its validity based on the
following four questions:
(1) Is the model complete and accurate? Is there a
linkage missing?
(2) Which relationships in the model have a large
amount of empirical evidence, and where is
evidence lacking?
(3) Which research methods have been used and
what are their limitations?
(4) How does the proposed model differ from other
models?
This paper has reviewed a part of the existing
literature and uses the concepts and conclusions
from the literature to build the new model. There are
no major contradictions that might indicate
inaccuracy in the model. Furthermore, the review
has taken previous literature reviews into account.
Although specific terms might have not been
mentioned, major concepts and relationships from
the literature in the IS/IT business value chain
should be therefore covered.
The relationship between IS/IT capabilities and
IS/IT utilization (e.g. Goodhue 1995, Goodhue &
Thompson 1995) and the relationship between
information use and decision performance (e.g.
Keller & Staelin 1987, Jung et al. 2005) have been
demonstrated in major studies. It is further a fact of
life that business process performance and decision
performance have an impact on organisational
performance, which can be reflected by financial
performance and shareholder value (e.g. Davenport
1993). However, the creation of IS/IT capabilities
from IS/IT and complementary organisational
resources and information resources is an
underexplored area that does not provide sufficient
empirical evidence. Similarly, the impact of IS/IT
utilisation on business processes needs to be further
investigated. Finally, a problem with research that
tries to link a concept to a performance measurement
is that performance is very context-dependent and
that there are different layers of performance, e.g.
business process performance, financial
performance, shareholder value etc. Additionally,
many external variables can influence performance
like, for example, country characteristics, industry
characteristics and trading partner resources. The
variety of approaches proposed (and used) is
therefore nearly infinite.
In the literature so far, predominant research
methods have been conceptual work and literature
reviews, case study research, experimental research
and survey research. A more explorative qualitative
research method like design science (e.g. Hevner et
al. 2004) would be suitable to get more in-depth
insights into the investigated relationships.
Moreover, a better combination of technical
computer science and IS/IT management social
science research might provide better results.
The framework proposed in this paper has a
higher granularity and links performance closer to
IS/IT by using an information perspective,
integrating the body of knowledge from the IS/IT
and the information quality discipline. It can provide
a useful research framework for researchers, who
can focus on different sections of the whole model.
5 CONCLUDING REMARKS
The question if and how IT and IS enhances
organisational performance has been a major point
of focus in the IS communities in the last decades
(Banker & Kauffman 2004). Connected to this
discussion has been the IS/IT business value chain
that aims to explain the different steps and
relationships that lead from IS/IT resources to
business value. We have proposed an integrated
framework for IS/IT business value and discussed its
validity. Reviewing prominent frameworks one key
observation demonstrated the lack of information
focus in these frameworks. The proposed framework
aims to address this limitation, and includes
AN INFORMATION ORIENTED FRAMEWORK FOR RELATING IS/IT RESOURCES AND BUSINESS VALUE
365

explicitly an information lens to the IS/IT-Business
value discussion. This will help, so we believe,
researchers to explain some of the important
observations and give practitioners indications to
improve the IS/IT capabilities. As indicated in the
discussion, rather than replacing existing
frameworks, it complements existing approaches.
Our frameworks can thus bridge the often isolated
research works addressing the complex relationship
between IS/IT and business value. We discussed
assessment for information management,
information quality and information risks in this
context. In applying our framework, these
assessment approaches can help other researchers to
examine some of the key relationships between
IS/IT and business value. In further research, we aim
to expand on these assessment techniques and apply
our framework in empirical studies.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This research has been partly funded by EPSRC
project “Information Quality in Asset Management”,
reference number EP/G038171/1.
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